3Pillar Globalhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com
Software Product Development CompanyWed, 20 Feb 2019 10:37:27 +0000en-UShourly1Unlocking the Customer Value Chain – The Innovation Engine Podcast with Thales Teixeirahttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/unlocking-the-customer-value-chain-digital-disruption-thales-teixeira
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/unlocking-the-customer-value-chain-digital-disruption-thales-teixeira#respondTue, 19 Feb 2019 17:16:35 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16933On this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we look at unlocking the customer value chain. Among the topics we’ll discuss are why companies need to be thinking more about business model innovation than technology innovation, why they should focus far less on the competition and far more on their customers, and what we really... Read more »

On this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we look at unlocking the customer value chain. Among the topics we’ll discuss are why companies need to be thinking more about business model innovation than technology innovation, why they should focus far less on the competition and far more on their customers, and what we really mean when we talk about the concept of digital disruption.

Joining us for this episode is Dr. Thales Teixiera. Thales is a professor at the Harvard Business School in HBS’s marketing unit, and his focus is researching digital disruption and the economics of attention. He’s also the author of the just-published book Unlocking the Customer Value Chain, which focuses on decoupling disruption and innovation, helping readers uncover the true drivers of change in business today, and why the answer usually isn’t technology (as we’re so often led to believe).

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

What is digital disruption?

“Digital disruption is the process by which an incumbent, a large established company, loses a significant amount of market share in a relatively short period of time,”Thales says. “And, generally, those who steal this market share are so-called digital startups.” For example, in the span of about four years, Dollar Shave Club stole about 51 percent of online razor sales from Gillette, and Gillette’s market share, at the time, was 21 percent.

What is the customer value chain?

“The idea behind the customer value chain is when consumers have to procure products and services, they go through a series of steps in order to achieve this goal.” If you want to buy a refrigerator, you have to go to visit a store, evaluate the options, compare all of the prices the features, choose a refrigerator, pay for it, receive it, use it, and a few years later, dispose it. All of these are activities in the customer value chain. All of these activities, across anything that an individual buys, or a company buys, or the government buys as a customer can be classified into value-creating, value-capturing, and value-eroding activities. And that is the customer value chain. So, if companies want to remain competitive amidst all the challenges they’ll face, they don’t need to just excel at innovating at the product or service level. They need to succeed at business model innovation.

It’s not technology that disrupts most markets. Customers are disrupting markets. As a result, Thales believes companies should be focusing on developing a deeper understanding of their customers. So why aren’t most companies doing this?

Customers are becoming more and more important in the process of disruption – but most companies are still focused on competitors. Why? “After talking with so many executives…it revealed itself to me that competitors are easily tracked,” Thales says. “They’re easily compared, to be copied, and to fight back. You become solely focused on competitors and what they are doing.” On the other side, consumers and customers are much harder to cater to. There’s very few competitors compared to millions of customers. There’s no media channel that’s going to each individual customer’s household and learning from them. So, it’s much harder to cater to your customers – but in this world where customers hold the power, you have to.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/unlocking-the-customer-value-chain-digital-disruption-thales-teixeira/feed03Pillar Global CEO David DeWolf Named a Top Tech Services CEO of 2019https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-global-ceo-david-dewolf-named-a-top-tech-services-ceo-of-2019
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-global-ceo-david-dewolf-named-a-top-tech-services-ceo-of-2019#respondTue, 12 Feb 2019 17:12:39 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16903Award from the Software Report Recognizes Nation’s Top 50 Leaders in Tech Services Industry Fairfax, VA – February 12, 2019 – 3Pillar Global, a leading developer of innovative software products, announced today that CEO David DeWolf has been recognized as one of the Top 50 Tech Services CEOs of 2019 by The Software Report, a... Read more »

Fairfax, VA – February 12, 2019 – 3Pillar Global, a leading developer of innovative software products, announced today that CEO David DeWolf has been recognized as one of the Top 50 Tech Services CEOs of 2019 by The Software Report, a tech market research outlet with more than 27,000 readers.

“I’m honored to be recognized alongside so many industry leaders I respect and admire, and appreciate the incredible team here at 3Pillar that makes this kind of success possible,” said DeWolf. “At 3Pillar, we are dedicated to building up leaders that embody and inspire others toward the three core principles for which 3Pillar is named: integrity, agility, and innovation. This award is most of all a recognition that we’re living up to those principles.”

The Software Report’s Top 50 Tech Services CEO award recognizes remarkable leadership in the tech services industry. Honorees were chosen from nearly 5,000 nominations evaluated across several categories, including integrity, intelligence, energy, company culture and company growth through comments and reviews from colleagues and employees on CEO strengths and areas for improvement. Previous CEOs include Marc Benioff of Salesforce, Tobias Lutke of Shopify, Stewart Butterfield of Slack, and Reggie Aggarwal of Cvent.

About 3Pillar Global

Since its founding in 2006, 3Pillar has grown under DeWolf’s leadership to more than 900 employees in seven offices across three continents. 3Pillar has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the U.S. seven times, was recognized by research advisory firm Forrester twice in 2018 as a leading digital experience provider and custom software development firm, listed as one of the Washington Post’s Top Workplaces three times, and has been Great Place to Work-Certified™ twice. DeWolf’s work at 3Pillar has been honored by several awards, including SmartCEO Magazine’s Future 50, Washington DC’s 40 Under 40, and Virginia’s Fantastic 50.

About the Software Report

The Software Report is a comprehensive source for market research and insights, business news, investment activity and corporate actions related to the software sector. Based in New York City, the firm is run by a seasoned team of editors, writers and media professionals highly knowledgeable on software and the various companies, executives and investors that make up the sector.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-global-ceo-david-dewolf-named-a-top-tech-services-ceo-of-2019/feed0AI, Chatbots & Natural Language Processing: The Present & Future of Digital Healthcare – with Greg Fitzgeraldhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ai-chatbots-natural-language-processing-the-present-future-of-digital-healthcare-with-greg-fitzgerald
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ai-chatbots-natural-language-processing-the-present-future-of-digital-healthcare-with-greg-fitzgerald#respondWed, 06 Feb 2019 19:08:36 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16889For this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we take a look at what the future of digital healthcare may hold for both patients and providers. We cover the role AI and chatbots will have in the future (and are already having, in some cases), some of the inherent challenges in innovating in the healthcare... Read more »

For this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we take a look at what the future of digital healthcare may hold for both patients and providers. We cover the role AI and chatbots will have in the future (and are already having, in some cases), some of the inherent challenges in innovating in the healthcare space, and how one leader at a Fortune 100 company in the healthcare space views the intersection of digital and healthcare.

Joining us for this episode to talk about those topics and more is Greg Fitzgerald, the Staff Vice President of Digital Product Engineering at Centene. Greg is responsible for the strategic direction and development of the consumer technology products emerging from the Digital Product Engineering team at Centene. His career has included leadership positions in a number of successful healthcare startups, including running engineering teams for LiveHealthier, a digital wellness company acquired by Centene, and HealthCentral, a social community of patients and experts acquired by Remedy Health Media.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

You can tune in to the full episode using the SoundCloud embed below.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Artificial Intelligence & Conversational Agents

We discuss a whitepaper Greg co-authored on Conversational AI and Healthcare along with Amy Troop: “Artificial Intelligence and Conversational Agents in Healthcare”

The first question they wanted to answer, Greg says, was do people want to even interact with something like this in the healthcare space? It’s one thing to ask Alexa to turn on your lights. It’s another thing to ask Alexa to book a doctor’s appointment for you or ask, “Hey, what’s this thing on my foot?” What they found is that, yes, “people are very interested in interacting with this type of experience in the healthcare space.”

From there, they looked at what types of things are people interested in asking about? What they found is they got a lot of queries; everything from “How do I add a dependent to my plan?” to “Is my prescription for Xeljans covered by my insurance?”

Finally, can a conversational experience actually communicate information better than a traditional web experience, or a paper packet that might be sent in the mail? “And, again, I think the answer turned out to be yes – to an extent,” Greg says. “And so, one of the learnings that we took away was conversational experience is really good for communicating information. But as soon as you get to anything more complex, or maybe the things that require complex data collection, you actually need to drop down into a mixed user interaction,” or something that has more traditional non-conversational aspects to it.

AI & Natural Language Processing in action

Colloquium is a platform at Centene that serves as the foundation for all of their conversational experiences.

It is a HIPAA-compliant natural language framework that allows Centene to train domain-specific models within the healthcare space. So, there are models for things like answering questions about insurance and doing triaging and diagnosis.

There is also a framework and administrative system for authoring the responses to the queries that come in via NLU.

“One of the things that we’ve really focused on at Centene and with this product is how do we make sure that we have the ability to understand what the user is saying but, also, the ability to make sure we’re providing the correct answer?” Greg says.

But is implementing these natural language systems actually helping anyone?

In a word, yes.

There was an 18% improvement in binder payment rates, which is very significant because it means “18% more people are going to be able to use their insurance when they first go to in the new year than had Amber not been present.”

There was a 40% increase in PCP selection rates as compared to non-Amber users.
And when they did some qualitative surveying of their members, they saw a significant increase from Amber users, almost a full point on a five-point Likert scale, on topics like, “I understand the basics of how my coverage work.”

Finally, they saw a 20% increase in respondents’ likelihood to be satisfied with their choice of Ambetter.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ai-chatbots-natural-language-processing-the-present-future-of-digital-healthcare-with-greg-fitzgerald/feed0Should You A/B Test?https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/should-you-ab-test-ux-best-practices
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/should-you-ab-test-ux-best-practices#respondThu, 24 Jan 2019 22:08:10 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16875First of all, what does A/B testing mean? A/B testing starts when you want to be sure you’re making the right decision. Simply put, A/B testing is comparing the effectiveness of two (or more) different variants of the same design, by launching them under similar circumstances. These A/B tests should be driven by a cause... Read more »

A/B testing starts when you want to be sure you’re making the right decision.

Simply put, A/B testing is comparing the effectiveness of two (or more) different variants of the same design, by launching them under similar circumstances.

These A/B tests should be driven by a cause and the objective to perform the test should be very clear because the problem that prompted the decision of conducting a testing experiment in the first place becomes the hypothesis.

The objective

Setting your objective speaks about whether you want to optimize a current state to see what is the best way to do an activity, or validate an idea to see which activity is the best.

A/B testing evolves precisely with the problem that you want to fix and if there is a metric that you want to improve or you see a certain metric that is not performing as you hoped. These analytics helps make better product decisions that can have a huge impact on your user’s experience. It can be as simple as comparing two different colors for a CTA button for an online store or finding just the right place for a new feature.

For example, I recently noticed that Instagram was running an A/B test on their interface, around where saved photos are stored and where should that ”Saved” section be. They had 3 different variants and I could see each one of them on all of my accounts and that was really interesting to observe as a UX designer. I assume that they decided on the winner of those 3 variants because I can only see one version now, but I believe that their target was to make sure they keep a clean interface and at the same time add new features without disrupting the usual activity. Keep us scrolling without getting frustrated that things are changing. Each change that a user is facing should go through A/B testing, to make sure it fits business goals.

Reasons why A/B tests fail

Starting with the wrong hypothesis.

Now, hypothesis basically means answering a simple question:

What (should happen) if?

This is a prediction that you create before running the testing experiment. It states clearly what is being changed, what you believe the outcome will be and why you think that’s the case. Running the experiment will either prove or disprove your hypothesis.
Here’s a hypothesis formula from Optimizely:

From the ‘Building Your Company’s Data DNA’ book

Not taking statistical significance into consideration.

Optimizely explains it this way:

Statistical significance is important because it gives you confidence that the changes you make to your website or app actually have a positive impact on your conversion rate and other metrics. Your metrics and numbers can fluctuate wildly from day to day, and statistical analysis provides a sound mathematical foundation for making business decisions and eliminating false positives.

Solving too many issues at once.

Changing too many things at the same time makes difficult to know which change influenced the test. That’s why you need to test components one after another so results won’t get conflicted. You need to prioritize and solve the most critical one first.

Things that can improve your A/B testing results

The Timeline:

Testing needs to spread on a sufficient amount of time in order to collect valuable results. A short amount of time might get products falling in the early imaginary wins trap. There’s no need to set up a specific number of min. or max. users to engage with your test to declare a winner variant, but make sure the time period is long enough for you to see numbers you can trust.

The Prediction API:

Predictive APIs help improve the app experience by learning the user’s capability to perform inside the app and predicting if the user is more likely to stay or leave the app due to certain steps they might need to make. Sometimes only users who make certain steps are exposed to the test, so hints are a good way of guiding the user towards the ”tested territory” inside your app.

The A/A Test:

A/A testing means using A/B testing to test two identical versions against each other. Typically, this is done to check that the tool being used to run the experiment is statistically fair. In an A/A test, the tool should report no difference in conversions between the control and variations and it helps to make sure you distribute the test to all the users.

So, should you A/B test?

Testing experiments help make better product decisions, so A/B testing can be seen as guidance that backs you up with data. Just make sure that if you improve a metric, there are no other metrics impacted negatively.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/should-you-ab-test-ux-best-practices/feed0CES 2019 Recap: AI for AI’s Sake, Mobility as Transportation, Data, & Privacy + The Product Mindset Book Previewhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ces-2019-ai-hype-mobility-data-privacy-product-mindset
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ces-2019-ai-hype-mobility-data-privacy-product-mindset#respondWed, 16 Jan 2019 14:12:37 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16850For this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we take a look back at the year’s biggest consumer technology show, CES, which just wrapped in Las Vegas. Among the topics we cover are whether AI lived up to the massive hype at this year’s show, why “mobility is the new transportation” according to Allstate’s CEO and... Read more »

For this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we take a look back at the year’s biggest consumer technology show, CES, which just wrapped in Las Vegas. Among the topics we cover are whether AI lived up to the massive hype at this year’s show, why “mobility is the new transportation” according to Allstate’s CEO and why data is now their key differentiator, and why podcasting – yes, podcasting! – is poised to make a big splash in 2019. We also get the latest on an upcoming book called The Product Mindset to get the Cliff’s Notes version of the book and an update on when it will be hitting bookshelves.

David DeWolf, the founder and CEO of 3Pillar Global, joins us for this episode to talk those topics and more. David lives at the intersection of business, technology, and leadership. After accidentally starting 3Pillar Global, at the age of 26, David has grown the organization to nearly 1000 employees around the globe, hitting the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies for seven of the last nine years. 3Pillar Global builds customer-facing digital products for companies like Carfax, PBS, Equinox, National Geographic, and many other industry-leading companies. After a little more than a decade in business, 3Pillar and David have racked up dozens of awards, including SmartCEO Magazine’s Future 50, Washington DC’s 40 Under 40, and Virginia’s Fantastic 50. A board member and angel investor, David’s insights on the digital economy, innovation, culture, and company growth have been featured in Fortune, Fast Company, Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, PandoDaily and ZDNet, among others.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

You can tune in to the full episode of the podcast using the SoundCloud embed below.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Is AI ready to live up to the massive hype it has received? David isn’t so sure. Most of what he saw he felt like was companies trying to use AI and machine learning to capture attention, not use it in ways that will actually benefit their customers or consumers.

Data, it has been said, is the fuel of the digital economy. David delves into that concept and discusses how businesses can deal with the heightened sensitivity around how consumer data is used. The short version – if data is used to provide something of value (read: not just serve up targeted ads), consumers are more likely to be okay with it.

A lot of products that were featured at CES centered around healthy living, which David sees as an extension of the in-roads wearables like Fitbit have made with consumers.

David covers the difference between the IT mindset that has traditionally governed most software development projects and the Product Mindset, which places an emphasis on driving business growth and generating dollars rather than driving efficiency and saving pennies.

Resources:

ABOUT THE INNOVATION ENGINE

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engineon iTunes. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or SoundCloud to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ces-2019-ai-hype-mobility-data-privacy-product-mindset/feed0Change Blindness in UXhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/change-blindness-in-ux-user-experience-best-practices
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/change-blindness-in-ux-user-experience-best-practices#respondThu, 10 Jan 2019 14:16:25 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16780There is a strong discrepancy between the amount of information being transmitted and the amount of information our brains have the capacity to process. I have always been fascinated by the way the human brain works and I also think that being familiar with cognitive science is a key skill of any designer. In the... Read more »

There is a strong discrepancy between the amount of information being transmitted and the amount of information our brains have the capacity to process.

I have always been fascinated by the way the human brain works and I also think that being familiar with cognitive science is a key skill of any designer. In the digital world, there is a huge number of websites, apps, articles, and advertisements trying to get our attention.

People are programmed to focus their attention on anything that is different or new.

As you are reading this article, there are numerous sensations, sights, and sounds going around you. The traffic sounds, other people talking around you, the warmth of the room or maybe the memory of a conversation you had earlier today.

So, depending on your ability to focus, the brain can induce a specific blindness that makes you miss the changes happening in your visual field.

In one experiment, participants were shown an image that was changed during a brief blank interval in the visual scene. The researchers found that when there is a brief break in the visual scene, people find it more difficult to detect changes. This is called change blindness.

Change blindness is a common phenomenon in the digital world, where visual elements can appear and disappear or change their label almost instantaneously. For example, observers often fail to notice major differences introduced into an image while it flickers off and on again, like a page that refreshes. In many cases, the changes in the visual seem so big, that they seem impossible to miss. Yet when attention is directed elsewhere, people are capable of missing both minor and major changes that take place right in front of them.

Change Blindness is rooted in the human brain’s instinctual ability to filter out unnecessary information and stimuli. Basically, any time a new visual element is introduced to an existing display, it is at risk of being ignored.

Here is a popular example about how change blindness works, on the Vans.com mobile website. If a visitor selects a size that is not available, the label of the “Add to Cart” button changes to say “Out of Stock.” This slight, but important, change in the label doesn’t stand out, when the rest of the display stays the same.

Source: Google

This is happening because:

One: the user’s attention is focused here on the Size and Quantity fields

Two: The “Out of Stock” label was overlooked because it looked too much like the “Add to Cart” label, and was too far from where the user’s attention was focused. Although the design is perceived by our senses (vision, touch, hearing), it is immediately processed by our brain. As designers, we have the power to guide the human mind during and even beyond the interaction with the product by using some key steps in our design process:

1. Make your page easy to scan

Remove clutter and make the page as easy as possible for your user to achieve their desired outcome, rather than trying to find actions or buttons. An important part of the design is making it highly usable for the targeted users and allowing for extra functionality to be discovered as it is needed. This will help you fight change blindness and will help you increase the conversion rate.

2. Minimize visual interruptions

Avoid page refreshes whenever possible. This will cause an interruption in the user’s visual perception and lead to an unnecessary shift in their attention.

3. Provide smooth, continuous feedback

Keep users informed about what is going on within reasonable time, without leaving them wondering and waiting. You can do this through: loading bars, spinners, active state of a button, scroll flag, feedback sounds, etc. Also, make sure the feedback is delivered in a natural place, where the user expects it, so it can be followed and understood.

4. Use appropriate visual emphasis for significant new elements (such as contrast, size, and padding) to ensure they are noticeable.

Use data from multiple sources to get a more accurate picture; combine the insights you gain from your experience and knowledge, your quantitative web analytics, and qualitative sources (like surveys, heat maps, sessions replays, or usability tests).

5. Rely more on recognition than recall

Minimize the user’s memory load by making actions, elements, and options visible. Therefore, the users won’t need to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily regained.

6. Focus on aesthetic and minimalist design

The less elements on the screen, the more potent the remaining ones are. Focus on using only relevant information and avoid every extra details or element that could be irrelevant and that will cause an unnecessary shift in user’s attention.

7. Build products with consistency and standards

Make sure that the users won’t have to wonder whether different words, labels, colors, or actions mean the same thing.

8. Prevent errors

Try to either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and provide users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action. Even better than good error messages is a product that prevents a problem occurring in the first place. This will help you keep users focused.

9. Use good contrast

Use tools to measure the contrast you are using. Low color contrast creates legibility problems. The basics of color contrast are easy to understand: a higher contrast between text color and the background color is better for legibility.

10. Mind the Typography and build a visual hierarchy

Typography has a huge effect on the mood and attention of users and also, by using the right typography, we can improve user engagement.

This is more than selecting fonts. It is the study of how humans read, perceive, how they recognize words and how the brain processes the information.

So why should anybody care about Change Blindness?

Change blindness is a psychological phenomenon that affects user perception in this digital universe. As designers, we have the power to control the human mind during and even beyond the interaction with the product and bring more value to the digital world by using our knowledge on cognitive science to improve the digital world.

Change blindness plays an important role in the way users understand and look at digital products. It’s important to notice that people often fail to detect changes to a visual scene and why users don’t see what you think they actually should see. Being aware of this cognitive phenomenon and understanding how to avoid it can aid you in creating your design strategy and process.

Oana Mihail originally published ‘Change Blindness in UX’ on Medium here.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/change-blindness-in-ux-user-experience-best-practices/feed0Remote Audio Data: The Next Generation of Podcast Analytics – The Innovation Engine Podcast, with Stacey Goers of NPRhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/remote-audio-data-from-npr-the-next-generation-podcast-analytics
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/remote-audio-data-from-npr-the-next-generation-podcast-analytics#respondTue, 08 Jan 2019 13:59:40 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16812For a special episode of The Innovation Engine, we talk about a new way of measuring podcast analytics that was recently unveiled by NPR called Remote Audio Data, or RAD for short. Among the topics we cover are why RAD was created, what the process was like for bringing it to life, and what comes... Read more »

For a special episode of The Innovation Engine, we talk about a new way of measuring podcast analytics that was recently unveiled by NPR called Remote Audio Data, or RAD for short. Among the topics we cover are why RAD was created, what the process was like for bringing it to life, and what comes next now that NPR is opening RAD up to the open source community.

Stacey Goers, a Product Manager for Podcasts and Social at NPR, joins us to discuss those topics and more. For the last year, Stacey has been leading the team responsible for developing RAD. That meant working with a wide range of podcast publishers and media companies to determine what RAD should become.

The media companies that support RAD and were instrumental in its development include Cadence13, Edison Research, ESPN, Google, iHeartMedia, Libsyn, The New York Times, New York Public Radio, Voxnest, and Wondery. There are also numerous organizations committed to using RAD, such as Acast, AdsWizz, Art19, AllSound, Blubrry Podcasting, Panoply, Omny Studio, Podtrac, PRI/PRX, RadioPublic, Triton Digital, WideOrbit, and Whooshkaa. Among the organizations responsible for helping bring RAD to life was 3Pillar.

For more information on RAD, you can read this blog post Stacey wrote on NPR’s website announcing RAD’s release.

Listen to the Episode

Tune in to the full episode of The Innovation Engine via the SoundCloud embed below.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Why did NPR want to create RAD? In 2014, when NPR first launched the mobile app NPR One, they realized that it “opened a huge great world for us,” Stacey says. They were suddenly able to see how their audience was actually interacting with their content – like when listeners dropped off of an episode and what length of pieces engaged the audience – and then make decisions based upon that.

One of the big reasons RAD is so important for the podcasting industry as a whole is that ad revenue for podcasts is growing rapidly. According to IAB, podcast advertising in the U.S. jumped from $169 million in 2016 to $314 million in 2017, and they’re projecting that it will hit $659 million by 2020.

RAD was officially launched in December, and it’s now being open sourced by NPR, which means that outside developers with an interest in contributing to the project can do so. So, what’s next on the roadmap for RAD? NPR is focusing, first, on full implementation with ad tech or hosting providers. They need to be able to understand it and use it because that’s what so many of us in the podcasting space rely on, NPR included. “But most importantly, if you’re a mobile developer, and if you are included in a podcasting app, or if you’re just overall interested, we know we really want folks to review that code and really give feedback on it,” Stacey says. “We know there’s a lot of smart minds out there, and I think we would really like to see that feedback. So, it’s only been a couple weeks, and we’ve seen some come in, but I really hope for more in the next couple weeks as well.”

ABOUT THE INNOVATION ENGINE

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engineon iTunes. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or SoundCloud to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/remote-audio-data-from-npr-the-next-generation-podcast-analytics/feed0What’s Next in AI? The One Thing I’m Looking for at CES 2019https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/whats-next-in-ai-the-one-thing-im-looking-for-at-ces-2019
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/whats-next-in-ai-the-one-thing-im-looking-for-at-ces-2019#respondWed, 02 Jan 2019 14:54:43 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16792Upon returning from CES last year, I declared IoT dead. When smart razors and connected breast pumps litter the showroom floor, I think it’s safe to say that connected devices just aren’t all that unique anymore. The connected buzz is gone. So, as we turn the page on 2018 and begin prepping for another Consumer... Read more »

Upon returning from CES last year, I declared IoT dead. When smart razors and connected breast pumps litter the showroom floor, I think it’s safe to say that connected devices just aren’t all that unique anymore. The connected buzz is gone. So, as we turn the page on 2018 and begin prepping for another Consumer Electronics Show, it’s appropriate to ask – “What’s next? What should we expect to see at next week’s show?”

In a world where data collection has become ubiquitous – the reality of connected everything – the next logical progression is to figure out how to use the data we collect for increasingly innovative things. This explains why the IoT buzzword of 2016 and 2017 has been replaced by acronyms like AI (Artificial Intelligence), ML (Machine Learning) and DL (Deep Learning). Each technique is fueled by data, and each promises to introduce new value that we previously could not have even imagined.

Contrary to popular belief, the reality is that unless you’re Facebook, Google, Amazon or Apple, you’re likely doing very little, save experimentation, with these advanced analytical techniques. Only the most forward thinking organizations have created the data infrastructure necessary to be able to deploy these technologies, and even those who have are struggling to envision how they might use them in order to enhance their products.

While that may be today’s reality, I believe we will soon see that you don’t have to be a Facebook, Google, Amazon or Apple to use AI, ML, or DL effectively. Earlier this year, Motley Fool covered three companies using AI to their advantage. Yes, two of the three were Alphabet (Google’s parent) and Apple, but the third was FireEye, a cybersecurity company that’s using machine learning to detect unseen threats and decrease threat response time.

So, what I’m looking for at CES in 2019 are the early indications that the age of AI has actually arrived. I’m looking for pragmatic applications of AI, ML and DL that are creeping into consumer products – in other words, more FireEyes. I’m looking for small incremental uses that will lead to breakthrough ideas as well as the major breakthroughs that will set the tone in various industries that have yet to crack the nut on how to use AI in their real world.

At this point, AI, ML, and DL are still mostly technological advances for their own sake. I have no doubt that over the course of the next few CES shows we will see an increasing number of innovators figure out how to leverage these techniques in order to address real consumer needs.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/whats-next-in-ai-the-one-thing-im-looking-for-at-ces-2019/feed0The 3 Keys to Building Products That Drive Retention – Recap of the Wearable Technology Show 2018https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/three-keys-building-products-drive-user-retention
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/three-keys-building-products-drive-user-retention#respondThu, 13 Dec 2018 20:47:42 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16739I had the privilege of being invited to speak at the Wearable Technology Show in Santa Clara this week, where I gave a bit of a reprisal of a talk I delivered at the Dev4Health and Health 2.0 conferences earlier this year. The talk, titled Good Ideas and Algorithms Aren’t Always Enough, covered why it takes... Read more »

I had the privilege of being invited to speak at the Wearable Technology Show in Santa Clara this week, where I gave a bit of a reprisal of a talk I delivered at the Dev4Health and Health 2.0 conferences earlier this year. The talk, titled Good Ideas and Algorithms Aren’t Always Enough, covered why it takes much more than just a brilliant idea or an elegant algorithm to develop a wearable or digital product that keeps users coming back.

The 3 Keys to Building Products that Drive Retention

So what does it take to develop the kinds of products that users love and return to over and over? Whether we’re talking wearable technology, digital health, or even digital products in other industries, the song remains the same on what I think are the 3 most important things for any product leader to keep top of mind to build products that retain users:

Relentless focus on user experience. If the products you build aren’t usable, useful, and desirable, your customers will find another option that checks each of those 3 boxes.

Use data and analytics to inform decisions. The most popular method of decision-making in the world of product development is often going with the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. In an age where there are few limitations on what kinds of analytics can be baked into any digital product, opting for the HiPPO route is inexcusable.

Minimize time to value. Get your products into user’s hands early and often. It’s the only way to ensure not just that you’re continually making the right decisions about what to build, but that a market exists for your product in the first place.

View the Presentation

If you’d like to see more of what I covered in the talk, you can view the complete presentation via the SlideShare embed below.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/three-keys-building-products-drive-user-retention/feed0High Availability and Automatic Failover in Hadoophttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/high-availability-and-automatic-failover-in-hadoop
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/high-availability-and-automatic-failover-in-hadoop#respondThu, 06 Dec 2018 21:02:14 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16712Hadoop in Brief Hadoop is one of the most popular sets of big data processing technologies/frameworks in use today. From Adobe and eBay to Facebook and Hulu, Hadoop is used by a wide range of companies for everything from machine learning and natural language processing to data analysis and ad optimization. It is now a... Read more »

Hadoop in Brief

Hadoop is one of the most popular sets of big data processing technologies/frameworks in use today. From Adobe and eBay to Facebook and Hulu, Hadoop is used by a wide range of companies for everything from machine learning and natural language processing to data analysis and ad optimization. It is now a common definition of Hadoop that it caters to “the 3 V’s” – volume, velocity, and variety. With use cases in analytics, search, log processing, analysis, and recommendation engines, Hadoop is commonly used in applications that are data-intensive.

The Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is a reliable Hadoop shared storage. It scales horizontally, which means we can add as many nodes/servers without shutting down the system, which with commodity hardware can be very cost effective. It can be used to process both structured as well as unstructured data. It is highly optimized for very large sets of data.

The Hadoop Landscape

According to Forbes, 53% of companies in one recent study were employing big data analytics, which was “defined as systems that enable end-user access to and analysis of data contained and managed within the Hadoop ecosystem.” For a list of companies that use Hadoop and short descriptions of how they use it, see this Powered By page on the Hadoop Wiki.

Problems with the Hadoop Framework

Prior to Hadoop 2.0, i.e. Hadoop 1.0, there was a single point of failure (SPOF) in NameNode. By this, we mean if the NameNode fails, then whole Hadoop system/Cluster goes down. Then it can only be recovered manually with the help of a secondary NameNode which results in overall downtime of the Hadoop Cluster, i.e. the Hadoop cluster would not be available unless the Hadoop administrator restarts the NameNode.

Solution for SPOF

The shortcoming in Hadoop 1.0 was overcome in Hadoop 2.0 by providing support for two NameNodes. It introduces the Hadoop 2.0 High Availability feature that brings in an extra NameNode (Passive Standby NameNode) to the Hadoop Architecture, which is configured for automatic failover. Now Hadoop has its built-in fault tolerance. Data is replicated across multiple nodes by means of replication factor, which can be configured at the admin end and if a node (Active NameNode) goes down, the required data can be read from another node (Standby NameNode), which has the copy of that data by courtesy of Journal nodes.

Why/How can NameNode go down?

Suppose you gave your cluster to another developer who did not understand the performance issues and ran a simple directory traversal, which gave a massive load to NameNode such that it crashed, hence the entire cluster goes down.

If someone is trying to process a large number of small files, Hadoop performance can get a hit and NameNode can go down.

Latency spikes due to garbage collection on the NameNode can bring NameNode down.

If the root partition ran out of space, NameNode can crash with a corrupted edit log.

It’s often a requirement that HDFS requires commercial NAS to which the NameNode can write a copy of its edit log. The entire cluster goes down any time the NAS is down because the NameNode needs to hard-mount the NAS.

Enabling High Availability and Automatic Failover

If you are running Hadoop and want to ensure stability and reliability of your cluster, one can overcome it by facilitating Hadoop’s high availability and automatic failover options. The problem this addresses is that without using high availability and automatic failover, any time the NameNode goes down, the entire system goes down. You can think of high availability and automatic failover as your insurance policy against a single point of failure.

Approx Downtime during Automatic Failover

As per Hortonworks:

A 60 node cluster with 6 million blocks using 300TB raw storage, and 100K files: 30 seconds. Hence total failover time ranges from 1-3 minutes.

A 200 node cluster with 20 million blocks occupying 1PB raw storage and 1 million files: 110 seconds. Hence total failover time ranges from 2.5 to 4.5 minutes.

Is automatic failover more expensive then SPOF?

Split-brain scenario

Besides a small downtime using HA, the other important point to be noted is that it is important for an HA cluster that only one of the NameNodes is active at a time. Otherwise, the namespace state would be divided between the two, risking data loss or other incorrect results. In order to ensure this property and prevent the so-called “split-brain scenario”.
In this case, multiple master nodes think they’re in charge of the cluster, is a “time skew” on the order of perhaps 10 or more seconds between the current master node and the other master. This is however taken care by JournalNodes, they will only allow a single NameNode to be a writer at a time. During a failover, the Standby NameNode which is to become active will play the role of writing to the JournalNodes, and prevent the other NameNode from continuing in the Active state, allowing the new Active NameNode to successfully take the failover

The video tutorial

This video tutorial was created for Hadoop administrators or database administrators responsible for administering their company’s Hadoop clusters. It assumes intermediate knowledge of Hadoop and provides a step-by-step walkthrough of how to enable high availability and automatic failover using Zookeeper.

Configuration details after HA implementation

The following changes are made in the files after implementing HA in Hadoop cluster:

Conclusion

Automatic Failover in Hadoop starts automatically in case of NameNode crashdown. Automatic failover adds ZooKeeper quorum and ZKFailoverController Process (ZKFC) components to an HDFS deployment. Work is going on to make Automatic failover a better process, like without starting the HDFS service and to reduce the HA time.

As per Cloudera, work was recently started to allow Hadoop configuration changes without a restart.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/high-availability-and-automatic-failover-in-hadoop/feed0How the Right Tech Stack Fuels Innovation – The Innovation Engine, Episode 148https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/how-the-right-tech-stack-fuels-innovation
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/how-the-right-tech-stack-fuels-innovation#respondWed, 05 Dec 2018 20:10:41 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16721On this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we take a look at how choosing the right tech stack can fuel innovation in your company. We’ll talk about why the technology your company uses matter, what the most successful product teams do to ensure the work they’re doing has an impact, and how to avoid... Read more »

On this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we take a look at how choosing the right tech stack can fuel innovation in your company. We’ll talk about why the technology your company uses matter, what the most successful product teams do to ensure the work they’re doing has an impact, and how to avoid shiny-new-toy syndrome when it comes to adding additional tools to your tech stack.

Our guest on this episode is Latif Nanji, the co-founder and CEO of Roadmunk, a road-mapping enterprise SaaS platform that serves thousands of product innovators. Roadmunk’s customers include Amazon, The New York Times, Nike, Coca-Cola, Bloomberg, Adobe, and Citibank. Prior to Roadmunk, Latif was a senior product manager at Miovision Technologies and the co-founder and CFO of Pokerspace.com.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

You can tune in to the full episode of the podcast interview with Latif Nanji using the SoundCloud embed below.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Why is it important to find the right tech stack to fuel innovation? A few key thoughts from the episode:

Latif believes that innovation can be turned into a repeatable process, if you provide your teams with the proper set of resources, like the right tech stack.

When Latif talks about a tech stack to fuel innovation, what are some of the tools or services actually in that stack? We’re not talking coding languages, at least in the terms of this podcast. We’re talking business applications like ClientSuccess, HubSpot, Salesforce, Xero, ChartMogul, Chargebee, Slack, Intercom, Superhuman, CleanMyMac, and 15Five – so quite a variety of tools.

“The number of startups that have been successful, as a percentage of history, has relatively been the same, which means that your tech stack isn’t necessarily correlated with success. What it has actually opened up is for the number of startups, in total, in absolute terms, to have the opportunity to be bootstrapped; to start, and innovate ideas. And so, on absolute terms, there’s more successful companies, today, than there were 10 years ago.”

It’s really important to think about the tech stack in relation to where the business is going to be in a few years, or in some cases, five or 10.

Roadmunk does something unique: they have a full-time product manager who handles these internal tools. Why? “Being able to operate an entire set of tools means you learn how the entire business operates, right at the ground level; even lower than some of those teams actually even know themselves,” Latif says. “That, to me, is just such a powerful position.” That person also reduces so much of the stress of other teams, because there’s someone in there that can help them solve problems in those tools.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/how-the-right-tech-stack-fuels-innovation/feed03Pillar Global Certified Great Place to Work for the Second Straight Year in Indiahttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-global-certified-great-place-to-work-for-the-second-straight-year-in-india
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-global-certified-great-place-to-work-for-the-second-straight-year-in-india#respondTue, 27 Nov 2018 15:26:38 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16698Prestigious award honors 3Pillar Global’s excellent company culture and employee satisfaction Noida, India – 3Pillar Global, a leading developer of innovative software products, has been recognized as a Great Place to Work-Certified™ organization in India for its outstanding company culture for the second straight year. The prestigious Certification from the Great Place to Work® Institute... Read more »

Noida, India – 3Pillar Global, a leading developer of innovative software products, has been recognized as a Great Place to Work-Certified™ organization in India for its outstanding company culture for the second straight year. The prestigious Certification from the Great Place to Work® Institute is awarded to companies that foster excellent workplace environments for their employees. Previously, the Great Place to Work® Institute named 3Pillar Global’s Noida office to the 2015 Top 50 Best IT & IT-BMP Organizations to Work for in India list.

“While 3Pillar is a global organization with consistency of values, each of our offices uniquely respects and values the cultures of the local environment. We’re proud that our effort to create a state-of-the-art space for employees has not only attracted quality talent that’s creating incredible products, but also has improved their happiness overall,” said CEO David DeWolf. “Our Noida office was thoughtfully designed to retain great talent and facilitate a positive work environment for over 350 employees.”

3Pillar Global’s Noida office, which opened in April 2017, incorporates beautiful design and a collaborative, open concept to support its positive company culture.

This achievement reflects 3Pillar Global’s three core values of integrity, agility and innovation, as well as the company’s cultural values. “At 3Pillar we believe in treating each and every person with dignity and respect, building collaborative and high performing teams, communicating openly, driving quality results over perfection and working iteratively with a willingness to learn from mistakes,” said Govind Negi, Senior Director of Talent Engagement and Delivery Center Lead. “Being certified with the Great Place to Work Institute reassures us that we are living these values every day.”

With seven offices on three continents, 3Pillar has also been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the U.S. seven times and has been listed as one of the Washington Post’s Top Workplaces three times. The addition of the Great Place to Work Certification is a reflection of the company’s continued investment in its employees, which enables them to deliver world-class software products for companies and organizations like PBS, CARFAX, Equinox, National Geographic, and many more.

About Great Place to Work® Institute

Great Place to Work® Institute is a global research, consulting and training firm that helps organizations identify, create and sustain great workplaces through the development of high-trust workplace cultures. Great Place to Work serves businesses, non-profit organizations and government agencies in over 50 countries.

About 3Pillar Global

3Pillar Global builds innovative, revenue generating software products, enabling businesses to quickly turn ideas into value. 3Pillar balances business-minded thinking with engineering expertise in disruptive technologies such as mobile, cloud, and big data to develop products that meet real business needs. To date, 3Pillar’s products have driven over $1 billion in revenue for industry leaders like CARFAX, PBS, and numerous others. For more information, visit www.3pillarglobal.com. To view current job openings and learn more about the company culture, please visit https://Careers.3PillarGlobal.com.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-global-certified-great-place-to-work-for-the-second-straight-year-in-india/feed0The Road to AWS re:Invent 2018 – Weekly Predictions, Part 3: Quality of Lifehttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/road-aws-reinvent-2018-weekly-predictions-part-3-quality-of-life
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/road-aws-reinvent-2018-weekly-predictions-part-3-quality-of-life#respondMon, 26 Nov 2018 16:12:41 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16684For the last two weeks, I’ve been making predictions of what might be announced at AWS’ upcoming re:Invent conference. In week 1, I made some guesses around potential serverless offerings. For week 2, I focused on data processing and data pipelines – e.g. data 2.0. This week, I’m going to focus on some little changes... Read more »

For the last two weeks, I’ve been making predictions of what might be announced at AWS’ upcoming re:Invent conference. In week 1, I made some guesses around potential serverless offerings. For week 2, I focused on data processing and data pipelines – e.g. data 2.0.

This week, I’m going to focus on some little changes that can just make things a little bit easier. These could easily be swept under the rug, but sometimes the little things make a big difference. Things like the recently announced S3 public access protection, and streaming support for Transcribe are great examples of little things that are quite impactful.

I’ll take a break from long descriptions and just punch out some bullet lists of predictions/wish-list items.

Improved Cross Account behavior

Given how much creating a multi-account organization is promoted – both from a security perspective, as well as a functional one (limits per-account, etc.), any improvements to this area would be greatly appreciated. The announcement of the start of cross account resource management is a great start. Some hopeful additional announcements in this area:

Multi-account view within the console – especially for IAM – new Resource Access Manager is a good start – it feels a little ‘bolted on’ – but progress is good!

CloudFormation support for individual resources to be created in another account

Route53 subdomains being owned by different accounts for private zones

Significant improvements in ease of auditability of sub-account/assumed role actions to source IAM user

IAM & Security Improvements

Authentication and security are obviously keystones in AWS – and improving anything in this area will significantly help all customers.

Some small improvements that will be highly impactful:

Better MFA support in CLI actions – having to assume a role or do weird profile tricks is no fun and discourages MFA usage

CloudTrail with MFA delete and an Athena table definition on by default for new accounts. Alternatively, allow setting MFA delete on a CloudTrail bucket without violating security practices (by issuing API key/secret as root account to run the command)

Proactive security alerts – regularly send notifications should items be found – allow snooze/ignore – additionally ensure default settings for all services are in line with AWS’ own best practices, and force confirmation should users attempt to deploy features in a manner that doesn’t align with them.

Miscellaneous Improvements

There are a lot of other areas that can be improved by making a few minor adjustments:

Session Manager support for SSH connections – it was mentioned in its release announcement, but releasing it will be great.

A better email management option – instead of per user per month model – let me pay based on email volume, or have a better email forwarding / management offering.

Budget enforcement – disabling of either IAM keys or killing resources based on amount spent.

Obviously, most of these won’t happen. With re:Invent this week, this will be the last part in this series. While there, I’ll do a follow-up post to the keynote addresses to judge how well I did with these predictions – and to see what is announced that I didn’t see coming.

Hopefully by looking at the guesses I’ve made, you can think of some areas where leveraging the cloud can help your business in new ways – the massive toolbox that AWS (and other cloud vendors) provide you give you an entirely new way of looking at building products. By mixing and matching traditional infrastructure, ‘serverless’ tools, managed services, and your imagination – you can truly bring your products to your customers faster, cheaper, and in a more scalable manner than ever before.

Going to re:invent? Have some thoughts on this? What are your guesses on what will be announced? Comment below and let me know what you think.

The last in @MrDanGreene's 3-part series of predictions on what he expects to see at #reInvent revolve around general quality of life improvements for #AWS users. Read up to see how accurate Dan's crystal ball is! Click To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/road-aws-reinvent-2018-weekly-predictions-part-3-quality-of-life/feed0The Road to AWS re:Invent 2018 – Weekly Predictions, Part 2: Data 2.0https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/the-road-to-amazon-web-services-reinvent-2018-data-2-0-weekly-predictions-part-2
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/the-road-to-amazon-web-services-reinvent-2018-data-2-0-weekly-predictions-part-2#respondWed, 14 Nov 2018 16:19:25 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16645Last week I made the easy prediction that at re:Invent, AWS would announce more so-called ‘serverless’ capabilities. It’s no secret that they are all-in on moving from server management to service management. I guessed at a few specific possibilities – SFTP-as-a-Service, ‘serverless’ EC2, and a few others. This week, I want to look at some... Read more »

Last week I made the easy prediction that at re:Invent, AWS would announce more so-called ‘serverless’ capabilities. It’s no secret that they are all-in on moving from server management to service management. I guessed at a few specific possibilities – SFTP-as-a-Service, ‘serverless’ EC2, and a few others.

This week, I want to look at some of the other capabilities provided by AWS and make some predictions as to what announcements we might see. Why should any or all of this matter to you? If you’re in the business of processing, storing, and analyzing large sets of data, these updates may significantly impact the speed, efficiency, and cost at which you’re able to do so.

Week 2 Prediction: Data 2.0

While AWS has a number of existing tools to manage data ingestion and processing (e.g. Data Pipeline, Glue, Kinesis), I think adding in an orchestration framework optimized for all the steps in a robust data processing framework would really allow for AWS’ data analytical tools (Athena, QuickSight, etc) to really shine.

Data-Mapping-as-a-Service

I cut my teeth with data integration on platforms like WebMethods. While it may have had some drawbacks, it was, as a solution set, really excellent at:

Providing endpoints for data delivery

Identification of data by location, format, or other specific data elements

Routing the data to the right processors based on the above features

Mapping of each data entry from one format to another

Delivery of transformed data into target location

I can see an equivalent of something akin to a managed Apache NiFi solution – in a manner like AWS’ ElasticSearch Service. Tying in the ability to route various tasks to be executed by Lambda and/or Fargate, supporting Directed Acyclic Graph (DAC) modeling, and a tight integration into writing out data to S3 as both final and intermediate steps would be a game-changer for products that have to import and process data files – particularly from third parties.

S3 Lifecycle on read time

One of my pet peeves on the S3 lifecycle management is that moving from Standard to Infrequent Access storage class has nothing to do with the frequency of accessing the file. While I would imagine that the underlying capabilities of an object store makes it very difficult to actually do this, it would provide a much-needed metric to make storage decisions.

DynamoDB deep document mode

DynamoDB is a great hybrid key and document store. I use it often for small document store and retrieval. However, the current limits on document size and scan patterns make using DynamoDB as a managed MongoDB-level solution is a challenge. Providing more robust document-centric capabilities, while still supporting the scalability, replication, and global presence would significantly “up the game” for DynamoDB. As a wish-list factor for DynamoDB I would like to completely remove the pre-allocation of throughput for reads and writes. Let each request set an optional throttle, but charge me for what I actually use rather than what I might use. The current autoscaling is a significant improvement over nothing – but it can be improved.

RDS – Polyglot edition

For a while there, there was an interesting trend to try to combine multiple database paradigms into a single view – combining document + graph, etc. I think that AWS may try to tip their toe into this view.By combining a few of their existing products together behind the scenes, it would be interesting to link ElasticSearch, Aurora, and Neptune together for a solution that tries to combine the best of each of the storage paradigms. Like most all-in-one tools, I’m honestly not sure if it will just do the multiple features equally mediocre. I often recommend a multi-storage solution for clients for their data – each one optimized for a particular use case, so there may be something there.

S3 auto-crawling and metrics

Imagine setting a flag on a data bucket so whenever a data file drops there, it is automatically classified, indexed, and ready for Athena, Glue, or Hive querying. Having some high-level metrics on the data within would be useful for other business decisions – row count – average values, etc. Adding in some SageMaker algorithms for data variance (e.g. random cut forest for discovering data outliers and/or trends) to fire off alerts would be incredible, too.

Wrapping it Up

In closing this week, I think there will be a lot of different announcements around data processing as an AWS-centric framework. AWS has most of the parts in play already – having AWS manage the wiring up of them so you only have to focus on the business value you are extracting from the data would realize the promise of the cloud for data processing.

Going to be at re:Invent? Drop a comment below and let me know what you hope to see there or your thoughts on what’s next.

Interested to hear what the #cloud experts think is coming in the way of #data announcements at #reInvent? @MrDanGreene weighs in with a few predictions in this post. Click To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/the-road-to-amazon-web-services-reinvent-2018-data-2-0-weekly-predictions-part-2/feed0The Road to AWS re:Invent 2018 – Weekly Predictions, Part 1https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/road-to-aws-reinvent-2018-weekly-predictions-part-1
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/road-to-aws-reinvent-2018-weekly-predictions-part-1#commentsWed, 07 Nov 2018 19:33:09 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16622Every year in Las Vegas, AWS holds their biggest conference of the year. Tens of thousands descend upon the desert. I heard numbers last year of about 45,000 attendees. They go for the thousands of training sessions, the events and celebrations of success in the Amazon cloud. Learning, seeing, and more partying (for some) than... Read more »

Every year in Las Vegas, AWS holds their biggest conference of the year. Tens of thousands descend upon the desert. I heard numbers last year of about 45,000 attendees. They go for the thousands of training sessions, the events and celebrations of success in the Amazon cloud. Learning, seeing, and more partying (for some) than you can shake a cloud at for a week every November.

AWS takes this opportunity to announce the majority of their new features and products at this conference during their two keynote addresses. I’m going to take a semi-educated guess for what might be coming up in a few short weeks. I may be right, wrong, or something in between, but it’s a fun exercise to think about how people are using the cloud, AWS in particular, and where I think they could do better. It’ll be interesting if they address that, by some accounts, Azure has caught up to them, revenue-wise.

Weekly Prediction: Can I haz more serverless?

Okay – so this is a pretty easy prediction – AWS has been moving more of their capabilities from ‘run a server to do it’ – to ‘call our service to do it’. There are a number of areas that I think are primed for replacement by a serverless approach.

SFTP service

Every solution I’ve helped build that processes files inevitably ends up needing to stand up a SFTP server. Typically, there are small instances that capture the file, then upload it to S3, where the rest of the AWS serverless ecosystem can take over. Replacing this with a simple service you enable on a VPC would simplify many infrastructures. Just have it route to S3 or to an EFS mount – and you make a LOT of people happy. Throw in FTP and/or FTPS, or any other file transport protocol to offer ‘file transfer as a service’ as a capability.

VPN service

The other servers that most ‘serverless’ solutions need to deploy is a VPN solution – whether via OpenVPN or via other marketplace offerings – securing your cloud resources, but allowing authorized access at the network level. This is critical to most product infrastructures. I think providing a service that you can enable on a VPC that provides a basic VPN solution (possibly even compatible with the OpenVPN client) would be a godsend for most product infrastructures.

Cognito as a Directory Service

There are a number of AWS solutions that need end users that are, in actuality, separate from IAM users. For me, IAM is a control system for AWS API calls – not for capabilities that are independent of those APIs. Allowing Cognito User Pools to control access to the two above solutions, act like an LDAP service for other software products. Along those lines, Cognito as an authentication system for EC2 instance authentication would be pretty amazing too. Centralize username/password as well as ssh access (by storing a user’s public key) could be much easier to manage than even the Simple Directory offering. Lastly, extending Cognito support for CodeCommit or a Docker image repository separates IAM from the these product’s workstreams, making them much less awkward to work with.

Fargate EFS volumes

I may have beat the horse to death with another dead horse on this request – I pretty much ask for it on any conversation with AWS regarding Fargate. The lack of persistent volume support limits the potential workloads that Fargate can work on. Providing the means of mounting an existing EFS volume to the Docker container would allow for a lot of flexibility and usage possibilities.

Lambda time limit increase (again)

I know that AWS just did the great change of tripling the Lambda timeout limit from 5 minutes to 15 minutes. The challenge is that they showed that they can increase the limit. I would like for them to increase this to 60 minutes – or unlimited for that matter. You’re paying for usage by-the-millisecond anyway. I do think putting a user-defined limit on it is good though to avoid denial-of-wallet attacks by recursion and/or infinite loop issues.

Serverless EC2

This one is a bit out there, to be sure, but hear me out – if AWS can run a database engine that autoscales the CPU and memory usage dynamically, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to do that on a ‘regular’ instance. On launch, you would set min and max levels of processing units and the thresholds to increase the number of units – again, very similar to the serverless Aurora model. I would expect to pay a premium for this – but for when you have workloads that are not under your control – customer data file processing, traffic analysis, etc. – this may be the perfect fit.

Next week…

We’ll look at some of the other offerings outside of the serverless space and make some additional predictions.

If you’re going to be at re:Invent and want to discuss – drop a comment below! 3Pillar is an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, and we’re always looking to learn more about how people are leveraging AWS to improve their product.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/road-to-aws-reinvent-2018-weekly-predictions-part-1/feed1How Common App, a Non-Profit Tech Company, Transformed Itself for the Digital Agehttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/how-common-app-non-profit-tech-company-reinvented-itself-digital-transformation
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/how-common-app-non-profit-tech-company-reinvented-itself-digital-transformation#respondWed, 24 Oct 2018 11:46:14 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16578For this episode of The Innovation Engine, we talk innovation and the evolution of the Common Application, a nonprofit membership organization composed of more than 800 colleges and universities around the country and around the world with a common mission of promoting access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process. Among the topics we... Read more »

For this episode of The Innovation Engine, we talk innovation and the evolution of the Common Application, a nonprofit membership organization composed of more than 800 colleges and universities around the country and around the world with a common mission of promoting access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process.

Among the topics we discuss are how the Common App has transformed itself for the digital age, how they prepare to handle a seasonal rush that leads to massive spikes of usage and traffic, and what happens behind the scenes over the course of a year for a company that winds up having just one big release every year.

Jenny Rickard, the CEO of the Common Application, joins us to talk those topics and more, including what she sees for the future of the Common App and how the various constituencies in their orbit have a hand in influencing that future. Jenny has been the CEO of the Common Application for the last two years and her experience includes each area of the college enrollment management process, including admissions, marketing communications, technology, and financial aid.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

You can tune in to the full episode of the podcast via the SoundCloud embed below.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

How is the Common App promoting access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process?

The main way that they fulfill that mission is through the Common App itself, which is a streamlined application platform that allows applicants to enter information about themselves once and use it to apply to multiple colleges and universities. Students can also research financial aid and scholarship opportunities, and connect to college counseling resources through the platform.

“Last year, more than one million students, one-third of whom will be the first in their families to go to college, used the Common App to apply to college,” Jenny says.

Reinventing the Common App for the digital age.

“People will think, nonprofit technology company? That’s an oxymoron.” But Common App has spent a lot of time really focusing on how they can be more relevant to millennials and Gen Z by taking advantage of this digital economy.

“I really truly see us as a mission-driven organization whose goal is to help students through the innovative use of technology, to help them pursue their dreams of higher education regardless of their background, and we’ve been continually reinventing ourselves as technology has evolved.”

And this is a trend going back to the origins of the Common App. It was actually started more than 40 years ago by a group of visionary admissions deans and college counselors who saw an opportunity to reduce barriers to applying to college by leveraging the latest technology of that time – the photocopier! Hear more in the Vimeo embed below.

What about the future? Is there something on the horizon in terms of how education is going to change, or how Common App is going to be able to assist with accessibility?

When people think of college applications, they tend to focus on a high school-to-college market, but that’s actually a relatively small percentage of college applicants. So this year, Common App launched a new transfer application to help make the application process more accessible for even more people. Because when you look at the undergraduate student market, 40 percent of students are attending community college and 80 percent of those students, when they arrive at community college, indicate that they would like to transfer to a four-year institution. However, only a third of them do, and only 14 percent of them actually go on to complete a degree within six years. So, that’s a real opportunity for Common Application.

“We’ve launched our new transfer application to really try to be much more welcoming, accessible, and reflective of the very diverse experiences that community college transfer students bring, that returning adult learners bring, that veterans and military personnel bring to the process, to help connect them in a much more streamlined way to the 800 members that we have who are eager to enroll those students on their campuses.”

Resources & Show Notes

ABOUT THE INNOVATION ENGINE

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engineon iTunes. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or SoundCloud to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/how-common-app-non-profit-tech-company-reinvented-itself-digital-transformation/feed0Costovation – Giving Your Customers Exactly What They Want and Nothing Morehttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/costovation-affordable-innovation-giving-your-customers-exactly-what-want-nothing-more
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/costovation-affordable-innovation-giving-your-customers-exactly-what-want-nothing-more#respondWed, 10 Oct 2018 15:42:26 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16538On this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we delve into “cost-ovation,” or innovation that gives your customers exactly what they want – and nothing more. We’ll look at how companies like Planet Fitness have become wildly successful by challenging long-held assumptions about what their customers actually want and need, the three core traits shared by... Read more »

On this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we delve into “cost-ovation,” or innovation that gives your customers exactly what they want – and nothing more. We’ll look at how companies like Planet Fitness have become wildly successful by challenging long-held assumptions about what their customers actually want and need, the three core traits shared by companies that excel at costovation, and why setting a vision with strategic objectives is such a key component for any innovation effort.

Stephen Wunker, the Managing Director and US Market Head of New Markets Advisors, joins us to share insights from his latest book. Stephen combines world-class strategy consulting and entrepreneurial skills, and he’s the author of the newly-released Costovation: Innovation that Gives your Customers Exactly What They Want and Nothing More. He’s also the author of Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don’t, which was named one of the five Best Business Books of 2011, and co-author of Jobs to be Done: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation, which was one of four finalists for Best General Business Book of 2016.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

Tune in to the full episode via the SoundCloud embed below.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

The three core traits that are shared by companies who excel at costovation:

You need to start by breaking free of how you’ve always thought about the business. “There needs to be some sort of breakthrough perspective. Very frequently, that is based on a really deep and rigorous understanding of what customers are actually trying to get done … but it can also be internal customers. It doesn’t always have to be on the outside. Frequently, that is turbocharged by looking at examples of how companies in analogous situations, sometimes from very different industries, have tackled things in a way that makes you suspend those core assumptions.”

“You then need to focus in on particular levers that seem to have a particular promise in your situation.” So this might be something relating to your distribution or serving a particularly expensive set of customers.” What you’re really looking for are opportunities to continue to delight the customers, sometimes even delight a customer even more than you have previously, but that make radical step changes in your cost.”

“Finally, you need to look across the business at ways that you can integrate not just some potential redefinition of product, but the customer experience, the way you go to market, and your ecosystem partners – a number of different levers that allow you to have a multidimensional playing field.”

Stephen shares thoughts on the importance of goal setting in ensuring innovation efforts don’t go astray or become never-ending money pits in the video snippet below.

A few questions you can use to challenge your assumptions and get a different perspective:

Why would certain people hate this?

When you subtract elements from your proposition, what does it leave you with?

ABOUT THE INNOVATION ENGINE

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engineon iTunes. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or SoundCloud to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/costovation-affordable-innovation-giving-your-customers-exactly-what-want-nothing-more/feed0AI & Machine Learning Will See You Now, and Other Takeaways from Health 2.0https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ai-machine-learning-will-see-you-now-takeaways-from-health-2-0
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ai-machine-learning-will-see-you-now-takeaways-from-health-2-0#respondMon, 08 Oct 2018 17:00:38 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16526A 3Pillar team and I spent a few days in Santa Clara recently for the 12th annual Health 2.0 Conference. As usual, we spent some time after the conference debriefing on the trends and topics that we felt like would be most relevant in the short and long term for our customers in the space.... Read more »

A 3Pillar team and I spent a few days in Santa Clara recently for the 12th annual Health 2.0 Conference. As usual, we spent some time after the conference debriefing on the trends and topics that we felt like would be most relevant in the short and long term for our customers in the space. These were a few of the things that stood out most to us.

AI & Machine Learning Will See You Now

AI and machine learning seemed to be the predominant topics of conversation, both on stage and in conversations we had with companies looking for a little bit of product guidance.

In “The Power of Intelligent Care to Transform Delivery,” a panel that included leaders from HeartFlow, IOMED, and Flatiron, among others, covered the power of using AI in clinical settings for non-invasive diagnosis, digital diagnosis, and more. HeartFlow, for example, creates a personalized 3-D model of patients’ hearts to analyze blood flow, preventing patients that are suffering from chest pain from going through unnecessary invasive testing.

Telehealth is FaceTiming You

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before…but telehealth is finally on its way. Seriously. This time we mean it. Companies like Medici and Virta Health are showing promise when it comes to putting together a compelling offering that puts health care providers just a phone call – or a FaceTime video call – away.

Virta promises type 2 diabetes reversal that is powered, in part, by immediate access to care through mobile and desktop apps. Their CEO, Sami Inkinen, gave a compelling keynote on the concept of continuous remote care, which combines digitally-delivered care with insights gleaned from data and AI.

What to Do With All That Data? FHIR APIs and Open Access to Data is a Start

There was tons of discussion around patient data, interoperability, and how to put the patient back in control of their data and who can access it. Not everyone was bullish on where the industry is now, but many have high hopes for what Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) will do. FHIR is a draft standard and API for exchanging electronic health records that was in the news in January when it was announced that Apple would launch a Health Records app that uses the FHIR specification in conjunction with 12 hospitals.

Already in use by companies like Allscripts and championed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, FHIR is meant to be an antidote to the interoperability woes that have rendered EHRs essentially siloed to this point.

It Takes More than a Great Idea for Digital Products to Thrive

3Pillar CEO Jonathan Rivers spoke at Health 2.0 about the perils of wading into the digital healthcare space (see Why 98% of Digital Health Startups are Zombies and What They Can Do About It). Jonathan covered how anyone brave enough to do so can work to avoid the fate of becoming one of those zombie companies. Whether you’re at a startup or a more established company in the space, the lessons he shared should resonate. You can view his Slideshare presentation below.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ai-machine-learning-will-see-you-now-takeaways-from-health-2-0/feed0DevSecOps – The Latest Trends in Application Security from DevSecCon Bostonhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/devsecops-latest-trends
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/devsecops-latest-trends#respondFri, 05 Oct 2018 19:58:50 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16513I spent a very rewarding couple of days at DevSecCon in Boston recently. The conference focused on DevSecOps, which is a catch-all phrase for addressing security concerns as early as possible in the product development lifecycle. In no particular order, here were a few of the takeaways that were swimming around in my head as... Read more »

I spent a very rewarding couple of days at DevSecCon in Boston recently. The conference focused on DevSecOps, which is a catch-all phrase for addressing security concerns as early as possible in the product development lifecycle. In no particular order, here were a few of the takeaways that were swimming around in my head as I left Boston.

That’s me on the left at DevSecOps Boston.

DevSecOps is all about moving security activities ‘to the left’

The latest tools are tightly integrated with developer workflows, allowing meaningful security analysis, identification, and remediation during initial code development. Throughout the development, testing, QA, and production pipeline, there are tools that mean that in production there can be a high degree of certainty that there are no OWASP Top-10 vulnerabilities present.

It’s raining containers.

Containers are everywhere, and they are one of the enabling technologies that make both DevOps and DevSecOps possible, or at least make them easier and more fun to do. The ephemeral nature of containers, their implicit infrastructure-as-code paradigm and the continuing maturity of the technology all make containers one of those things that need to be in place for DevSecOps to work. (You also need automated tests, of course. You can read more on the importance and value of automated testing here and here).

DevSecOps is easier when it has a champion – or champions.

Developing security champions within engineering teams provides a quick way of spreading tools and best practices quickly throughout an organization. In my experience, the Champion is between the security expert and the main team of engineers.

Security doesn’t have to be painful to work.

One comment made by the excellent Matt Jones during his presentation emphasized that security really needs to disappear into the background. This is exactly the approach that 3Pillar’s UX teams take when thinking about security. Matt’s example was spot on – using two-factor authentication with a code from an app on your phone is WAY too many steps. Why not use an SMS based solution? It’s simpler, quicker, and a much better overall experience. This will be even more true when iOS 12 is released. Your Apple device will recognize recent codes in iMessages and email and offer to autofill them for you.

Most interesting tool: Contrast Security

I was very intrigued by what I learned about Contrast Security (www.contrastsecurity.com), a tool that provides automated detection and protection through in-code instrumentation. Contrast was recently listed as the only visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Application Security Testing, and I could see why based on how simple it makes it to keep applications secure.

See DevSecOps Presentations on Slideshare

If you’re interested in learning more about what was shared at the conference, there are a number of presentations that were given at the event – seven to be exact – that are now available on Slideshare. You can view them here.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/devsecops-latest-trends/feed0Digitization Decoded: Cracking the Secret Code Giving Companies Like Apple, Google, and Uber Their Edgehttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/digitization-decoded-cracking-secret-code-giving-companies-apple-google-uber-edge
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/digitization-decoded-cracking-secret-code-giving-companies-apple-google-uber-edge#respondWed, 19 Sep 2018 16:59:49 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16453On this episode of The Innovation Engine, we’ll look at how to crack the secret code giving companies like Apple, Google, and Uber their edge. We’ll talk about what it means to go through a digital transformation, how – or whether – you’ll know when you’ve successfully come out on the other side, and why... Read more »

On this episode of The Innovation Engine, we’ll look at how to crack the secret code giving companies like Apple, Google, and Uber their edge. We’ll talk about what it means to go through a digital transformation, how – or whether – you’ll know when you’ve successfully come out on the other side, and why you don’t have to work at one of the world’s most well-known tech companies to carve out a place for yourself in the digital world.

Pascal Finette, an expert on topics that include digitization, entrepreneurship, open innovation, technology trends, leadership, and cultural transformation, joins us to talk those topics and more. Anchored in more than 20 years of experience in the IT and internet industry with a vast network of subject matter experts, he regularly consults and delivers deeply engaging, refreshingly honest, direct, thought-provoking, and motivational experiences. Pascal’s newsletter, The Heretic, is read by tens of thousands of changemakers globally, and he recently started putting out a mini-podcast of his own titled The Heretic Semi-Daily Briefing.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

You can tune in to the full interview with Pascal Finette via the SoundCloud embed below.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Pascal touches on the concept of what he calls “exponential technologies,” and why all companies need to be prepared for their own digital transformations (even though it’s an overused term that Pascal dislikes):

When you look at your full value chain and the products and services you deliver in today’s digital world, you have to consider how can you enhance this value chain by either turning it digital or, where that isn’t possible, thinking about how you can increase the value and the features in this value chain by adding digital to it. “And this affects pretty much every business I can think of.”

The mistake many companies make, Pascal says, is believing that a digital transformation equates to putting up a website or enhancing the one they already have. The reality is that it’s much more about things like applying machine learning to large data sets, figuring out what to do with sensor information, and learning how to differentiate your offerings in a digital world when the cost of storage, reproduction, and automation is rapidly approaching zero.

ABOUT THE INNOVATION ENGINE

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engineon iTunes. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Stitcher Radio or SoundCloud, or Spotify to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/digitization-decoded-cracking-secret-code-giving-companies-apple-google-uber-edge/feed03Pillar Global Strengthens Executive Team With New Chief of People and Operationshttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-strengthens-executive-team-chief-people-operations-pete-buer
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-strengthens-executive-team-chief-people-operations-pete-buer#respondTue, 11 Sep 2018 14:15:43 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16438Tech firm continues to expand its leadership to support growth goals Fairfax, VA – September 11, 2018 Today, 3Pillar Global, a custom software and digital product development company, named Peter Buer its Chief of People and Operations. In this newly created role at 3Pillar, Buer will drive expansion strategy through leadership of the company’s Talent,... Read more »

Today, 3Pillar Global, a custom software and digital product development company, named Peter Buer its Chief of People and Operations. In this newly created role at 3Pillar, Buer will drive expansion strategy through leadership of the company’s Talent, Teaming, IT, and Business Systems organizations.

“We couldn’t be happier about bringing Pete on board,” said David DeWolf, CEO of 3Pillar Global. “Our company has grown tremendously over the past decade, and we’re not slowing down. Pete will be instrumental as we enter the next phase of our growth, helping us further attract top talent and improve operational efficiency.”

Buer brings a wealth of experience to 3Pillar. For over 28 years, he worked at CEB (Corporate Executive Board), a subsidiary of Gartner, where he launched and ran the firm’s Sales and Marketing practice and held roles as Chief Culture Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, and Head of HR.

Buer earned his MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and completed his undergraduate coursework at Colgate University.

“I’m thrilled to start digging into my work at 3Pillar,” Buer said. “The company has emerged as a leading player in the technology scene–not just in the Washington area, but globally– and I’m excited to help the team capture market and build out the infrastructure for growth.”

Buer is the third executive to join the 3Pillar leadership team this year. He is accompanied by Interfolio and EverFi alum Scott Varho and Margaret Shepard, veteran of 1776 and UNION. They both joined 3Pillar earlier this year as Vice Presidents of Technology and Marketing and Communications, respectively.

About 3Pillar Global

3Pillar Global builds innovative, revenue-generating software products, enabling businesses to quickly turn ideas into value. 3Pillar balances business-minded thinking with engineering expertise in disruptive technologies, such as mobile, cloud and big data, to develop products that meet real business needs. To date, 3Pillar’s products have driven over $1 billion in revenue for industry leaders like CARFAX, PBS, Equinox, and numerous others. Over the course of a decade spent helping clients build industry-leading solutions, 3Pillar clients have been acquired for more than $7 billion combined. For more information on the company, please visit www.3PillarGlobal.com. For job opportunities, please visit careers.3PillarGlobal.com.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-strengthens-executive-team-chief-people-operations-pete-buer/feed0Why 9.5 out of 10 Great Ideas Fail to Achieve Product Successhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/developing-successful-software-great-ideas-fail-achieve-product-success
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/developing-successful-software-great-ideas-fail-achieve-product-success#respondFri, 07 Sep 2018 19:13:15 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16427You know your market inside and out. You’ve cracked the nut. You’ve solved the problem. You know that this is the one. You’ve come up with the next breakthrough product idea. And, you’re most likely wrong. No matter what your idea, no matter how good it is, and, no matter how well you know your... Read more »

You know your market inside and out. You’ve cracked the nut. You’ve solved the problem. You know that this is the one. You’ve come up with the next breakthrough product idea.

And, you’re most likely wrong.

No matter what your idea, no matter how good it is, and, no matter how well you know your market, your idea likely isn’t as revolutionary as you think it is when you’re in the idea honeymoon phase. If Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos weren’t spot on in their initial ideas of what Facebook, Google, and Amazon would eventually become, why would you think you’ve gotten it 100% right out of the gate?

Why? One word. You.

Software products aren’t about you. Successful software products – those that gain significant traction and create a positive ROI – must be chosen. And, to be chosen, software products have to improve a customer’s life in some form or fashion.

Think about the apps and websites you choose to use on a regular basis. From Evernote to Facebook to The Common App, each of these products have specific purposes that improve the lives of their customers. Evernote increases productivity. Facebook, warts and all, helps you stay in touch with friends and family. The Common App lets students manage all their college applications in one place.

So, until your product is in the hands of customers who have said, “Yes, this is something that is worth the investment of time or money I have to make…” it’s simply not going to be a successful product in the long run.

In over 20 years in product development, I have never once seen an idea that survived first contact with the customer. If you want to be successful in the digital economy, you must learn to create software products that customers choose.

At Outsell’s Signature event in October, I’ll be sharing more about how you should be thinking about your digital initiatives and what you should do in order to make sure that your software is chosen. I’ll share the secrets we’ve learned at 3Pillar over 12 years spent building hundreds of products and creating billions of dollars of equity value for our clients.

If you’re unable to attend, keep your eyes peeled for the upcoming release of the book Jessica Hall and I are in the throes of writing. It’s titled “The Product Mindset – The Thinking You need to Succeed in the Digital Economy,”and it’s coming to a bookstore near you early in 2019.

Why do 9.5 out of 10 great product ideas fail? 3Pillar CEO @ddewolf takes that question on in this blog post. Click To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/developing-successful-software-great-ideas-fail-achieve-product-success/feed0How to Go From Idea to Inception, with Golden Krishnahttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/successful-product-launch-how-to-go-from-idea-to-inception-with-golden-krishna
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/successful-product-launch-how-to-go-from-idea-to-inception-with-golden-krishna#respondWed, 05 Sep 2018 16:06:17 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16399Golden Krishna joins us to discuss tips on how to go from idea to inception on this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast. We talk how to evaluate which ideas to actually act on, whether there is such a thing as bad feedback, moving ideas through the incubation process to successful product launch, and much more.... Read more »

Golden Krishna joins us to discuss tips on how to go from idea to inception on this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast. We talk how to evaluate which ideas to actually act on, whether there is such a thing as bad feedback, moving ideas through the incubation process to successful product launch, and much more.

About Golden Krishna

Golden is a Design Strategist at Google who works on a “horizontal future team” across all variants of Android and Chrome to push computing forward with new ideas that can ship in the next two to three years. Part of Golden’s charge in this role is to bring cohesion, innovation, and long-term strategy for the world’s most popular operating system.

In addition to being deemed one of the World’s Best Designers by Fast Company, Golden is the author of The Best Interface is No Interface, a wildly funny and illuminating read that makes a very persuasive case that “there’s an app for that” is the most insidious advertising tagline ever written.

If you’d like to hear more from Golden on why that is, check out Golden’s previous appearance on The Innovation Engine, when we discussed “A world without interfaces.”

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

You can tune in to the full podcast episode using the SoundCloud embed below.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

At places like Google, Apple, and Microsoft, teams tend to think in release cycle terms: Every year, a new release.

Golden’s job, however, is to get out of that cycle and innovate for the future, or many possible futures. “I was brought on to a team to think about how we can think a few years ahead,” he says. “And that allows us to do things more ambitiously, allows us to think a little more outside the box.”

“Now, one year sounds like a really long time, and it is in tech talk, but thinking two to three years means that you can really set the stage for some big things to happen down the road.”

Additional Resources:

ABOUT THE INNOVATION ENGINE

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engineon iTunes. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or SoundCloud to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser.

.@goldenkrishna shares thoughts on how to go from #idea to inception on The #Innovation Engine #podcast. Tune in for practical tips and some unconventional wisdom from one of the best designers in the world per @FastCompany. Click To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/successful-product-launch-how-to-go-from-idea-to-inception-with-golden-krishna/feed0Why You Need Automated Testing to Reach DevOps’ Holy Grailhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/automated-testing-devops-holy-grail
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/automated-testing-devops-holy-grail#respondWed, 22 Aug 2018 19:06:58 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16379Automated testing is required to reach DevOps’ Holy Grail – continuous deployment. Despite what you may have seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you do want to be the one who leads your team to find the Holy Grail. Trust me on this, you will have chosen wisely. It’s the best – and... Read more »

Automated testing is required to reach DevOps’ Holy Grail – continuous deployment. Despite what you may have seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you do want to be the one who leads your team to find the Holy Grail. Trust me on this, you will have chosen wisely. It’s the best – and only – way to ensure you sleep at night if you are responsible for developing, deploying, and maintaining digital products for a living.

So, why do you need automated testing in your life? It’s a prerequisite to get to the point where any developer working on your team can feel comfortable pushing code to production. Period. Well, actually…I suppose it’s not the only way. You could skip automated testing in your continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) setup and focus on lightning-fast rollback instead. That way, when untested code gets into the hands of your users and explodes, you’ve got an exit strategy…

Here are three other reasons that automated testing is well worth the investment over the long haul for any product development team.

Code Sitting on Staging is Worthless

The code your team is busting their humps to create can and must make its way to production. Quickly. I tell our teams this all the time – code sitting in a staging environment, or software repository, waiting to be deployed has no value to our clients. Worse, it has no value to their customers. Zero. As an organization, we want to get that code out into the world as quickly as possible so that our clients’ user base can use it, experience it…buy it. High quality, frequently released software is what is driving the digital economy and winning markets.

Bugs Reaching Production is Generally a Bad Thing

Automated testing ensures you don’t get the dreaded “It worked on my machine!” or “It worked on staging!” fits of terror after code has been pushed to production. You want your releases go through a battery of regression tests every time code is checked in. CI/CD is there to get your software into production far more quickly than if you are relying on more labor intensive manual testing. This gets you consistency and keeps you from making the same mistakes over and over again.

The Holy Grail=Any Developer is Trusted to Commit Code to Production

How will you know when you’re ready to drink from DevOps’ Holy Grail? When enough trust has been built up that your company’s leadership team (or the leadership team of the client you’re working for) has enough faith in your automated testing setup that any member of the team can press a button and commit the code they’ve been working on to production. This is the case with a number of 3Pillar’s client teams, and it’s the type of setup that can and should only be instituted if there’s an airtight automated testing system in place. It’s a tightrope that you don’t want to walk without a safety net. With the right safety net in place, however, you can sprint across that tightrope without fear.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/automated-testing-devops-holy-grail/feed0Application Security Trends & Tools from Black Hat 2018https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/application-security-trends-tools-from-black-hat-2018
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/application-security-trends-tools-from-black-hat-2018#respondMon, 20 Aug 2018 15:28:43 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16364I spent the better part of last week with a few of my 3Pillar colleagues in Las Vegas at the annual Black Hat security conference. What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but I’ve always been a bit of a contrarian. That being the case, I wanted to share a few observations from my... Read more »

I spent the better part of last week with a few of my 3Pillar colleagues in Las Vegas at the annual Black Hat security conference. What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but I’ve always been a bit of a contrarian. That being the case, I wanted to share a few observations from my first time at Black Hat that others in the application security space may find insightful.

Just Because You’re in Security Doesn’t Mean You Can Skimp on UX

An effective user experience is necessary for any security product to be successful in a market that sees the number of vendors rapidly multiply each year. This is a thread that was echoed in a number of talks, including from 3Pillar’s own CTO Jonathan Rivers.

A couple of simple examples illustrate how untreated UX failures can have negative consequences on application security.

Take the dreaded mandatory annual security training. If an employee is bored and disinterested, then they will avoid the training as long as humanly possible, and when they finally cannot avoid it anymore, they will do the absolute minimum to check the compliance box. The structure of the training is important, but so is how it is presented. User research, prototyping, and analytics are all critical to building something that people actually want to use. When they want to use it, they will engage with the content and actually get something from the experience.

Similarly, UX plays an essential part in making security operations teams effective. Operations teams are bombarded with a constant flow of information, much of it background noise. An effective UX reduces the chance of missing that critical alert. It’s not just about getting the right information, it’s about presenting it in an effective way that is usable in the moment.

2 Tools You Can Use to Build More Secure Software

In addition to the UX focus, one of my favorite parts of Black Hat was getting the opportunity to hear about tools that can be used to build solid, secure applications.

If you’re looking to add new tools to your security repertoire, here are a couple I was impressed with that you may also want to check out:

Jscrambler: Best in Show Tool for Application Builds

From an application build perspective, the best product was clearly Jscrambler.

Jscrambler focuses on application security within the browser. With more and more application logic implemented within the browser, Javascript has become a rich source of information for hackers. Code obfuscation tools such as Obfuscator provide good protection, but Jscrambler provides a lot more by also signing the code and preventing code tampering by using anti-tampering and anti-debugging techniques. The tool protects against code injections such as MitB, Malicious Extensions, Client-side XSS, and Malicious/Compromised third-party code, including zero-day attacks.

Jscrambler can be added to your CI pipeline (think Jenkins) as part of your build or deployment actions. Licensing is a little strange, but persevere. It’s worth it.

Spread the Word

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Couldn't make it to #BlackHat? Scott Young has you covered. See why he came away recommending @Veracode and @Checkmarx to build more secure #software + why he thought @JScrambler was best in show for application build tools.Click To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/application-security-trends-tools-from-black-hat-2018/feed0Designing the Future & the Future of Work – The Innovation Engine Podcast with Martin Wezowskihttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/podcast/designing-the-future-the-future-of-work-the-innovation-engine-podcast-with-martin-wezowski
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/podcast/designing-the-future-the-future-of-work-the-innovation-engine-podcast-with-martin-wezowski#respondWed, 15 Aug 2018 14:56:24 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16341Martin Wezowski, Chief Designer and Futurist at SAP, shares his thoughts on designing the future and the future of work on this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast. Among the topics we explore are the active role we can all play in designing a better future, how Martin approaches driving innovation in a global software... Read more »

Martin Wezowski, Chief Designer and Futurist at SAP, shares his thoughts on designing the future and the future of work on this episode of The Innovation Engine podcast. Among the topics we explore are the active role we can all play in designing a better future, how Martin approaches driving innovation in a global software giant, and what emerging technologies (and human behaviors) he believes are set to have a major impact on the way work happens.

In SAP’s Innovations Center Networks and Chief Innovation Office, Martin crafts future outlooks, strategies, and products, as well as designing and running innovation frameworks to find out what’s next for SAP. In 2017, he was named one of the 100 Most Innovative Minds in Germany by the prestigious Handelsblatt Financial Magazine. If you’ve been a long-time listener of The Innovation Engine, you may remember him from our episode recorded at SXSW back in 2017.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

You can tune in to the full episode via the SoundCloud embed below.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

These are just a few of Martin’s thoughts on designing the future:

The first thing that designers do is articulate that solution. Then you prototype that, you articulate it further. As articulation increases in fidelity, all of a sudden, you have a picture of something that will exist.

“And if we think about it, that thing will always exist in the future,” Martin says. “So, the future could be two days from now, two weeks, two months, or 20 years. Actually, that timeline doesn’t matter for the design principles there. That is a solution or a wished outcome for a design brief that will exist in the future.”

Designing the future is something we all do – for the most part, we all strategize about where we would like to be and we are visionaries about our desired outcomes. That’s a part of design.

Martin’s CTA: “Have you thought what these futures would be, or are you just working on one dot here and one dot up there, never connecting them together? I urge everybody to connect the dots and actually align these vectors of forces and technologies and changes that we provide to point to the future we all want to live in.”

Resources:

About The Innovation Engine

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engineon iTunes. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or SoundCloud.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/podcast/designing-the-future-the-future-of-work-the-innovation-engine-podcast-with-martin-wezowski/feed0Capango and 3Pillar Global Partner to Create Groundbreaking Mobile-First Job Matching App for Retail Sectorhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/capango-and-3pillar-global-partner-to-create-groundbreaking-mobile-first-job-matching-app-for-retail-sector
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/capango-and-3pillar-global-partner-to-create-groundbreaking-mobile-first-job-matching-app-for-retail-sector#respondTue, 14 Aug 2018 13:38:21 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16319Recently-released iOS and Android app created to help fill major gap of more than 700,000 open retail jobs Fairfax, VA – August 14, 2018 3Pillar Global, a global software and digital product development company, announced that it teamed up with Capango, a mobile-first retail job matching platform that connects job seekers to rewarding opportunities without... Read more »

Recently-released iOS and Android app created to help fill major gap of more than 700,000 open retail jobsFairfax, VA – August 14, 2018

3Pillar Global, a global software and digital product development company, announced that it teamed up with Capango, a mobile-first retail job matching platform that connects job seekers to rewarding opportunities without resumes, to support the company in the launch of their flagship mobile app under the same name. The app, available for iOS and Android, employs machine learning to pair job seekers with employers, bypassing the traditional and time-consuming resume process.

“Retailers are in the midst of a staffing crisis,” said Stefan Midford, president and CEO of Capango. “With retailers looking to fill more than 700,000 vacant jobs, the recruitment status quo of job boards and traditional resumes clearly isn’t working. By focusing on a job seeker’s unique interests, talents and abilities, Capango aims to transform the job seeking experience while empowering employers to locate the right candidates faster.”

The Capango app directs job seekers to tag their “powers” – skills and abilities – and “passions,”- preferences and interests. Applicants can also quickly upload a 60-second video pitch in lieu of a resume. That makes finding the right job easier — and accelerates the interview process for employers.

The app’s proprietary algorithm uses machine learning to match qualified job seekers with opportunities that suit their powers and passions. Fittingly for a mobile app, seekers can “swipe right” on job matches they’re interested in. 3Pillar’s mobile development expertise helped the Capango team rapidly develop the Capango iOS and Android apps using the NativeScript framework.

The Capango app also helps retailers reach people where they are, rather than relying on potentially ineffective advertising. More than three-quarters of Americans currently have smartphones. And half of those who have used smartphones in their job searches have filled out an application on their phones.

Capango has also struck a partnership with Shop!, one of the largest retail associations with more than 350,000 job seekers who have been invited to download the new app.

“3Pillar’s partnership with Capango has yielded a product that could very well revolutionize retail hiring,” said David DeWolf, CEO of 3Pillar Global. “We’re proud to help Capango meet the needs of retailers and job seekers alike with this new mobile app.”

ABOUT CAPANGO

Capango provides a highly focused, mobile-first retail job matching platform that quickly connects qualified job seekers to rewarding opportunities without resumes through a proprietary matching algorithm. Unlike traditional job boards, Capango eliminates the need to sift through boring resumes and lengthy applications, focusing instead on a candidate’s “powers” and “passions.” For employers, this means direct access to qualified, passionate workers, making hiring fast and cost-effective. Developed by the team behind Natural Insight, a leading provider of a cloud-based advanced retail execution and workforce management platform, Capango bridges the gap between incredible retail talent and great jobs. To learn more about Capango, visit http://www.capango.com/ and follow on Twitter @CapangoLife.

ABOUT 3PILLAR GLOBAL

3Pillar Global builds innovative, revenue-generating software products, enabling businesses to quickly turn ideas into value. 3Pillar balances business-minded thinking with engineering expertise in disruptive technologies, such as mobile, cloud and big data, to develop products that meet real business needs. To date, 3Pillar’s products have driven over $1 billion in revenue for industry leaders like CARFAX, PBS, Equinox, and numerous others. Over the course of a decade spent helping clients build industry-leading solutions, 3Pillar clients have been acquired for more than $7 billion combined. For more information on the company, please visit https://www.3PillarGlobal.com. For job opportunities, please visit https://careers.3PillarGlobal.com.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/capango-and-3pillar-global-partner-to-create-groundbreaking-mobile-first-job-matching-app-for-retail-sector/feed0The 4 Characteristics of a Healthy Digital Product Teamhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/4-characteristics-healthy-digital-product-team
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/4-characteristics-healthy-digital-product-team#respondTue, 07 Aug 2018 20:09:04 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16304Several weeks ago, I found myself engaged in two separate, yet eerily similar, conversations with CEOs struggling to gain the confidence they needed to scale their product development teams. In both instances, the product teams were struggling to keep up with market demand. As a result, each CEO felt the urge to invest in increasing... Read more »

Several weeks ago, I found myself engaged in two separate, yet eerily similar, conversations with CEOs struggling to gain the confidence they needed to scale their product development teams.

In both instances, the product teams were struggling to keep up with market demand. As a result, each CEO felt the urge to invest in increasing the size of their engineering teams. They both struggled to do so, however, because they lacked confidence that they were getting their money’s worth from the existing team. They were both hesitant to invest more in product development because they had no idea whether what they already had was even a “good” baseline to build from.

What struck me most about these two conversations was that it wasn’t just the market-facing CEO that was struggling with the question. The second CEO, interestingly enough, had grown up as an engineer, moved to product, and was now running a multi-million dollar startup for which he had written the first line of code. Yes – even technologists don’t always know what good looks like.

Over my 20 year career in product development, including the last 12 years running an organization committed to building high-performing product development teams, I have witnessed, over and over, teams that deliver on their potential and teams that do not.

Here’s what I have found, and, what I look for in a “Healthy Team:”

Healthy Teams are Predictable

It is nearly impossible to assess whether a team is delivering on its potential if the output that they produce is sporadic. It is absolutely impossible if their output can not be measured.

Healthy product teams have a defined timeline for each of their development “iterations” (typically a two week period of time in which the team delivers a small handful of features, though variations can and do exist). They consistently deliver roughly the same amount of feature development during each one of these iterations. They have a standard means for measuring this development (typically by using “velocity points”) and maniacally manage to, measure, and report on it.

Teams that consistently deliver on mutually understood, and quantitatively measured, feature commitments meet my minimum bar for a “healthy team.” Those that do not (or, even worse, those who don’t even have an agreed upon expectation), are not healthy teams.

In my experience, less than one out of every three digital executives are able to articulate what they expect, in terms of measurable output, from their development teams. Even fewer have confidence in their teams’ ability to consistently deliver, within a reasonable margin of error, against that expectation. (Note, one of the biggest mistakes I see made by executives is to push to maximize velocity as opposed to insisting on consistent velocity).

The best teams are reliable and consistently deliver value to the market at a sustainable pace.

Healthy Teams are Manageable

It takes a Herculean effort to manage the output of dozens of people. It’s nearly impossible to optimize the output of a software development team made up of dozens of people.

Healthy product teams are made up of between 4 and 12 professionals – ideally 7 or 8. The team members work closely together, collaborating effectively and efficiently via conversation and real time collaboration. The teams are small enough to have productive discussions but numerous enough to bring different experiences, expertise, and opinions to the table.

Manageable teams are able to react quickly to change. They self-manage and minimize the overhead burden of coordination.

In my experience, many digital executives fail to consider team construction when they are building their product development organization. They tend to think about individuals, capacity, and cost. They fail to think about the power of team and those individuals working together in concert. At the onset of an initiative, they may try to build product with only one or two rock stars. As they scale, they end up with 30 professionals working without any cohesion.

The best teams consist of 7-8 individuals, working together to produce more than the sum of the parts ever could.

Healthy Teams are Cross-Functional

It is difficult for a team to deliver on its potential if team members do not possess the correct proportions of expertise required for successful product development. It’s even harder if various aspects of that expertise are missing altogether.

Healthy product teams are made up of an interdisciplinary team that is trained in defining, designing, and developing the product. They include product management, user experience, engineering, and operations professionals. They have the ability to build the right product and they have the ability to build the product the right way.

Cross-functional teams are empowered to self optimize. They possess a holistic capability that enables them to respond quickly to feedback from each other and the customer. They are able to act without dependencies and as a result can be held accountable for producing consistent velocity.

In my experience, many digital executives tend to overvalue engineering capacity. Simultaneously, they undervalue product and engineering management. The end result is a team of hungry engineers ready to build, but, without the guidance they need to ensure they build the right thing. They are like a team of construction workers hammering away without an architect or a foreman.

The best teams are embedded with product management, engineering management, user experience, and engineering expertise.

Healthy Teams are Malleable

It’s hard to cook a three-star Michelin meal with 3 Master Chefs. Give me a master chef, a sous chef, and a kitchen porter and we’ll run circles around anyone that has “too many cooks in the kitchen.” The same concept applies in the world of product development.

Healthy product teams are made up of professionals with varying levels of expertise. They possess the wisdom of seasoned veterans, the perspective of mid-level professionals, and the vigor of new blood. They have the firepower needed to solve complex challenges and the hunger needed to complete mundane tasks.

Malleable teams possess the ability to rely on past experiences and the creativity to try new things. They avoid ideological debates, demonstrate both strength and flexibility, and move at a speed that is unparalleled by teams that are either too junior or too senior.

Summing it all up

High-performing product development teams are predictable, manageable, cross-functional and malleable. By making sure that you build these characteristics into your digital teams, you’ll be well on your way towards ensuring that you are getting value for your dollar.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/4-characteristics-healthy-digital-product-team/feed0Recapping Fortune Brainstorm Tech – The Innovation Engine Podcast, Ep. 143https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/recapping-fortune-brainstormtech-the-innovation-engine-podcast-ep-143
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/recapping-fortune-brainstormtech-the-innovation-engine-podcast-ep-143#respondWed, 01 Aug 2018 19:50:18 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16285On this episode of The Innovation Engine, David DeWolf and Jonathan Rivers join us to share an overview of all the news that was fit to print at this year’s Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference in Aspen. We discuss what the prevailing wisdom was in Aspen when it comes to artificial intelligence, how the gig economy... Read more »

On this episode of The Innovation Engine, David DeWolf and Jonathan Rivers join us to share an overview of all the news that was fit to print at this year’s Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference in Aspen. We discuss what the prevailing wisdom was in Aspen when it comes to artificial intelligence, how the gig economy is driving a wave of acquisitions and the two-way street of innovation some of those acquisitions have opened up, and what you can expect from an upcoming book on what we at 3Pillar call “the Product Mindset.”

About the Guests

David DeWolf, the Founder and CEO of 3Pillar Global, lives at the intersection of business, technology, and leadership. After starting 3Pillar almost by accident at the age of 26, he has grown the company to nearly 1000 employees around the globe. 3Pillar has won numerous awards for rapid growth, including being recognized on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies in the U.S. for seven of the last eight years.

Jonathan Rivers is the CTO at 3Pillar. He leads our product and engineering teams, which include more than 750 software engineers, product consultants, product managers, quality assurance, and user experience professionals. Prior to joining 3Pillar, Jonathan was the interim CTO at Telegraph Media Group and served as its Director of Service Delivery and Operations. As Senior Director of Web Operations and Customer Support at PBS, Jonathan helped transform PBS into a digital leader.

Listen to the Episode

You can tune in to the full episode via the SoundCloud embed below.

Episode Highlights

Key themes that permeated many of the talks and discussions at Brainstorm Tech that we touch on in the podcast include the following:

The Gig Economy

The Gig Economy showed up in force at the Brainstorm Tech Conference, with a who’s who of executives on stage talking about the gig economy and how it’s changing things. There was a specific focus on how the gig economy is affecting transportation and logistics, down to the last mile of delivery using bikes, scooters, and other personal vehicles.

“The gig economy is real and growing momentum,” David says. Traditional businesses are also making acquisitions in the gig economy, such as Ikea’s purchase of TaskRabbit, which shows how these innovative products and businesses are disrupting and being integrated into legacy businesses.

Artificial Intelligence isn’t really that intelligent…yet.

There is no real AI right now, according to Jonathan. What we’re calling AI is just machine learning or deep learning mixed with a couple of other different technologies. And the reason it’s not AI is it can’t reason. None of it has actually passed a Turing test yet. People talking about AI at the conference wanted to get off the hype bandwagon and talk very, very seriously about what machine learning and automation can do for business.

The Consumerization of Data

The power of data in the digital economy is figuring out how to monetize it in new ways through productization, through really commercializing that data and building products around it that allow you to leverage it for growth. So, how do you take that data and put it into the hands of your consumers?

The companies that are exploding, the ones that are really leveraging their data, are the ones that are giving it away (not necessarily for free, but sometimes that is the case). You’ve got to make it accessible. You have to let people interact with your data, find the insights, be able to leverage it for their value in order to monetize it to the greatest ability. You have to make that data approachable. Data is scary. We’re all overwhelmed with so much data, and it’s coming at us all of the time. So, you have to boil it and create great user experiences. You have to surface what is meaningful from the data if you truly want to drive value from your data.

“Tomorrow, if you want to be relevant, you better be autonomous as well,” David says. “You better be leveraging that data to provide value proactively, leveraging the technology with the data. And that’s truly what this digital disruption is all about.”

Why great algorithms don’t make great products.

There are roughly 2500 companies in the cybersecurity space right now, with another 300 likely to join in the next year – and, arguably, they all have good ideas, they all have that special sauce that makes them special. But here’s the thing: if those products are not useful or easy to use, they’re not going to get implemented.

These products are incomplete. They are focused on one job and one job only. Companies are putting together a quick algorithm that solves one problem, throwing it out into a glutted market, and hoping for market share and adoption.

True success in that space is going to come from building products that are usable, useful, and desirable; things that will actually get used and protect companies and see market share, either for market dominance on their own or to actually get acquired in the marketplace.

David’s Upcoming Book: The Product Mindset

Last but not least, we discuss an upcoming project that David and 3Pillar VP of Product Strategy & Design Jessica Hall have been working on for the last several months – a book on the Product Mindset. The core lesson is that it takes what we call the Product Mindset – really thinking about what makes software products fundamentally different from other types of software – to be successful in this digital economy and to truly innovate.

The Product Mindset is basically the thinking that you need in order to be successful and to lead digital transformation in your business. It’s really the story of 3Pillar, how we uncovered this mindset, and how it relates to the methodologies that are out there already. This is not yet another thing. We already have agile methodologies. We already have the lean startup. We already have the design thinking. Those are phenomenal tools, but they tend to be tools that are used by a certain constituency. So, agile development for engineers, design thinking for user experience professionals, the lean startup by product managers.

“What we have found is that executives and all of these teams need a common lens,” David says. “They need a common way of thinking in order to apply these tools and to use them. And so, that’s what we go into.”

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If you like the podcast, please help us spread the word about it on social media using the Click to Tweet feature below or the social media share buttons at the bottom of the post.

.@ddewolf and 3Pillar CTO Jonathan Rivers talk #AI, how the gig economy is fueling acquisition and a 2-way street of innovation, and other key takeaways from Fortune #BrainstormTech on this #podcast episode.Click To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/recapping-fortune-brainstormtech-the-innovation-engine-podcast-ep-143/feed03Pillar CRO Heather Combs Featured in Fast Companyhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-cro-heather-combs-featured-in-fast-company
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-cro-heather-combs-featured-in-fast-company#respondWed, 11 Jul 2018 19:04:49 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16235Heather Combs, Chief Revenue Officer for 3Pillar Global, was recently featured in an article in Fast Company. The article, titled “6 Women on How They Deal with Sexism and Discrimination at Work,” profiled six female business leaders who shared experiences facing sexism and misogyny throughout their careers. Heather speaks on her 20-year career in sales,... Read more »

Heather speaks on her 20-year career in sales, working in male-dominated industries where microaggressions and sexism abounded. “At 3Pillar, I’m not defined by my gender,” Heather says about her career now. “Even when I’m the only woman in the room, I’m the Chief Revenue Officer, full stop. You don’t have to let your gender define you.”

@3pillarglobal CRO @heatherdcombs talks with @fastcompany about issues female business leaders face each day - and how she has powered past them on her way to the C-suite. bit.ly/fast-company-heather-combs #womenintechClick To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-cro-heather-combs-featured-in-fast-company/feed03Pillar Recognized as an Experience Designer In Report by Independent Research Firmhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-recognized-as-a-leading-experience-designer-by-forrester-research
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-recognized-as-a-leading-experience-designer-by-forrester-research#respondSat, 30 Jun 2018 15:28:23 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16117Fairfax-based product development company named to its second report in 2018 FAIRFAX, VA (June 26) – Today, 3Pillar Global, a global custom software and digital product development company, was named to a list of globally-recognized digital experience providers by Forrester, one of the world’s top research and advisory firms. The report, How To Select An Experience... Read more »

Fairfax-based product development company named to its second report in 2018

FAIRFAX, VA (June 26) – Today, 3Pillar Global, a global custom software and digital product development company, was named to a list of globally-recognized digital experience providers by Forrester, one of the world’s top research and advisory firms.

The report, How To Select An Experience Design Provider, North America, 2018, details the qualities that customer experience professionals should assess when selecting a digital experience design partner. 3Pillar is included in Forrester’s “convergent designers”* category, which they define as services firms that help companies apply expert design practices to products, services, and spaces. The report also provides detailed overviews of the providers included.

“Companies everywhere are trying to create products that are useful, desirable and useable, but they aren’t sure how to do it,” said Jessica Hall, Vice President of Product Strategy and Design for 3Pillar. “Great products aren’t just built; they’re designed. That’s why more and more firms are looking for UX designers to help them understand their customers’ needs and craft compelling experiences.”

“Working with 3Pillar Global over the past 2 years has been vital to our design work,” said Bob Shepard, Head of Product at ParkMobile. “From the outset, the developers and designers we partnered with worked hard to understand our company and grasp our unique challenges. The 3Pillar team is agile and experienced — and I’m thrilled that Forrester has recognized their work.”

“3Pillar was an early believer in user experience design,” said 3Pillar founder and CEO David DeWolf. “For years, we’ve been working with well-known brands like CARFAX and ParkMobile to improve their overall design and usability experience, so we’re thrilled to be recognized by Forrester in its report.”

About 3Pillar Global

3Pillar Global works with innovative companies across the world to rapidly deliver value through their digital products and platforms. At all points of the product development lifecycle, 3Pillar empowers companies to quickly turn ideas into value by balancing strategic thinking with engineering expertise. For more information, visit http://www.3PillarGlobal.com.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-recognized-as-a-leading-experience-designer-by-forrester-research/feed0What Does the Ideal UX Team Look Like?https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/so-what-does-the-ideal-ux-team-look-like
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/so-what-does-the-ideal-ux-team-look-like#commentsTue, 26 Jun 2018 15:03:42 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16200Last week, the head of product for a small company asked me what the right size, skills, and make-up was for his UX team. Across the industry we’ve seen a trend toward smaller ratios of UX designers to engineers. My team serves about 30 clients with User Experience, and we typically run at ratios of... Read more »

Last week, the head of product for a small company asked me what the right size, skills, and make-up was for his UX team.

Across the industry we’ve seen a trend toward smaller ratios of UX designers to engineers. My team serves about 30 clients with User Experience, and we typically run at ratios of 1:7 for designers to engineers and 1:10 for product managers to engineers. This ratio is sometimes smaller based on the client’s needs, timeline, and what has already been done. The graphic below comes from a TechCrunch article covering this trend at six well-known tech companies.

Source: TechCrunch

Don’t Build the Church for Easter Sunday

One of my great mentors used to always say: “Don’t build the church for Easter Sunday” – the idea being that you need to have capacity to cover your usual needs and let things get a bit crowded on those busy times. His phrase works as well for heads of UX as it does for engineers building something.

When I was a UX director, I was responsible for a platform supporting 60 sites and additional data products. There was no way I could get budget for and staff a team big enough for all the work I had to do. There were also skills I really needed some of the time, but it didn’t make sense to have on-board all of the time.

I had a core team, including research, interaction design, and visual design, and I supplemented with contractors who knew us and could jump in when needed. I also was always developing relationships with staffing agencies, design agencies, and potential employees. It gave me the flexibility and capacity to cover Easter Sunday, Christmas Eve, and all the days in between.

Keys for Building the Ideal User Experience Team

So what should a head of product or UX do?

Build an actual team: A rockstar can’t get it all done alone.

Build a deep bench: Develop relationships with people who understand you and you can put in when needed.

Hire generalists, contract with specialists: Having some generalists who can do research, interaction design, and visual design will help you move quickly, have strong relationships within the company and have deep customer and product knowledge. Contract when you want heavy-duty information architecture, research, strategy, or visual design for a specific effort.

Have good standards and practices: Having a consistent way of working makes it much easier to bring in others to help share the load. This includes your design system, tools, and how you do things like user recruiting and delivering to engineering.

Get some juniors: A team full of seniors can be tricky because they cost a lot, they don’t collaborate too much, and they are likely to leave because you have no career path to offer them. Bringing on junior designers helps with all those things.

The ideal UX team is one that can flex and adapt. Getting there isn’t that hard if you know how to work it.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/so-what-does-the-ideal-ux-team-look-like/feed13 Topics We Should Be Talking About at BrainstormTechhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/3-topics-we-should-be-talking-about-at-brainstormtech
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/3-topics-we-should-be-talking-about-at-brainstormtech#respondThu, 21 Jun 2018 16:59:52 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16174Our 3Pillar clients, regardless of industry, share one common trait – they need help strategizing, designing, and delivering revenue-generating digital products based on their data. But that is where their similarities stop – we are constantly learning, evolving, and embracing new trends and technologies to deliver impactful digital products for our clients. As a CEO... Read more »

Our 3Pillar clients, regardless of industry, share one common trait – they need help strategizing, designing, and delivering revenue-generating digital products based on their data. But that is where their similarities stop – we are constantly learning, evolving, and embracing new trends and technologies to deliver impactful digital products for our clients.

As a CEO in the tech industry, it’s important for me to attend events like BrainstormTech to step out of the day-to-day and learn about the next evolution of technologies that we should be using to achieve best-in-class results for our clients. We’re seeing an uptick in work involving AI, voice, and automation. As I head out to Aspen, I’ve made a list of 3 key things I want to hear my colleagues delve into during the event.

Voice Controls & AI

Alexa, Siri and Google Home are in a flat-out war to become the standard AI assistant for your home. Even more importantly, these devices have increased the popularity of audio interfaces as a whole. As we do more and more AI work with our clients, I’m interested to hear from Toni Reid, Amazon’s VP of Alexa Experiences & Echo Device, on her perspective on standardization of voice controls and AI, and how she perceives their impact on the future of business.

The Impact of the Gig Economy

Over the past few years there have been multiple conversations about the gig economy, but they tend to focus on those companies who are fueling the gig economy services. With Ikea’s recent acquisition of TaskRabbit, I’m hoping to learn from TaskRabbit’s CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot’s talk about how Ikea is embracing the gig economy to transform their own operations.

Retail Disruption

There’s no lack of noise around the fate of the retail industry. With Payless, HHGregg, RadioShack, Gymboree, and even the legendary Toys ‘R Us among the dozens of retailers that have gone bankrupt over the past year, it’s time for the industry to figure out the future of retail outside of Amazon. I’m interested to hear from Richard Liu at JD.com, China’s biggest retailer, about what they are doing to set themselves apart in a “retail-as-a-service” business.

Each year, I make time to attend 3-4 marquee events that influence how I shape 3Pillar’s strategy, and BrainstormTech has been a staple for the last 4 years. So much so that for the second time this coming year, I’ll be bringing my executive team with me. I’m looking forward to discussing these topics and others with my peers and hearing key insights into the latest trends in technology, customer experience, and the digital economy.

Spread the Word

Help us spread the word about David’s post and what he’s looking forward to hearing about at BrainstormTech using the Click to Tweet feature or the social sharing icons below.

3Pillar CEO @ddewolf has attended @brainstormtech for the last 3 years. See which 3 trends and topics he's most looking forward to hearing about at this year's event in this new blog post. Click To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/3-topics-we-should-be-talking-about-at-brainstormtech/feed04 Reasons Everyone is Wrong About Blockchain: Your Guide to Rejecting the Latest Tech Crazehttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/4-reasons-everyone-is-wrong-about-blockchain-your-guide-to-rejecting-the-latest-tech-craze
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/4-reasons-everyone-is-wrong-about-blockchain-your-guide-to-rejecting-the-latest-tech-craze#commentsTue, 19 Jun 2018 13:29:14 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16165You know a technology has officially jumped the shark when iced tea companies decide they want in on the action. In case you missed that one, Long Island Iced Tea announced it was changing its name to Long Blockchain Corp. back in December. Its stock jumped 200 percent at the start of trading the following... Read more »

You know a technology has officially jumped the shark when iced tea companies decide they want in on the action. In case you missed that one, Long Island Iced Tea announced it was changing its name to Long Blockchain Corp. back in December. Its stock jumped 200 percent at the start of trading the following day. That’s brisk, baby!

The least disturbing part of the story is that the name Long Blockchain Corp. makes no sense. Far more disturbing is that the company made the change even though they were, by their own account, in the early stages of evaluating and discussing potential partnerships in blockchain.

This story, to me, shows just how infatuated the technology space is with blockchain—a technology that, despite the hype, an overwhelming majority of companies doing business today have no true use for. As a Chief Technology Officer, I’ve seen more than enough fads and infatuations (Google Glass, anyone?) come and go. Unless you’re working with a very specific use case, I’d recommend sitting on the sidelines for this particular craze.

Don’t just take my word for it. Plenty of others are coming to similar conclusions. Nouriel Roubini had a similar take in an article he co-authored earlier this year, The Blockchain Pipe Dream. Recent research from GlobalData found that databases or other traditional technologies could be used instead of blockchain in 19 out of 20 cases where blockchain use is being touted.

Fodder to Help You “Just Say No” to Blockchain

If the articles above aren’t enough to scare off your blockchain-obsessed bosses or co-workers, here are 4 more compelling reasons to avoid using the technology, contrary to popular conventional wisdom about it being the technology to end all technologies.

1. Blockchain isn’t “more secure” than other modern technologies.

Blockchain has been hailed as the technology that’s going to fundamentally revolutionize security in the digital space. I hate to be the one to break it to you…there’s no such thing as a “secure” technology. Encrypted means just that – encrypted. It doesn’t mean secure. That may sound like splitting hairs. It’s not. There’s a big difference. Any encryption has the potential to be broken. Doing so is simply a matter of time, desire, and compute power. Think of it this way: all encryption is a big, big math problem. Someone with sufficient time and/or compute power will be able to crack it eventually.

Another huge flaw in the “Blockchain will solve any/all security issues” logic is that the most commonly exploited security vulnerabilities are not technology-related. They’re related to humans being fallible, or even gullible. Humans who unwittingly give up their email passwords (see John Podesta, and Fazio Mechanical, or in the case of the RSA hack, a phishing attack was used to access information on their two-factor authentication product). By no means am I advocating not securing your customers’ data or information. What I am saying is that security is not technology alone, it requires education as well. It doesn’t matter that a blockchain is encrypted when it’s far easier to trick someone into giving up the payload.

2. Blockchain should support the business model, not be the business model

I think the problem most people run into is that they’re thinking of blockchain as the business model. Instead of coming up with a business model and asking what technologies need to be used to support it, they’re starting with, “I’ve got an idea for how to use blockchain!”

To me, that’s the equivalent of looking at a hammer and saying, “This is a useful tool. I can do a lot with this hammer. I’m going to go into business hammering things.” There’s a reason why you don’t find too many professional hammerers…Architects, yes. Carpenters and construction workers, of course. “Professional hammerers?” Not so much.

3. Most companies don’t need blockchain. They need a place to store information.

Depending on what you’re building or what you’ve already built, what I think most people need when they talk about blockchain is simply a database. If blockchain isn’t right for you, what database would be? It depends on your needs, but my two favorites are:

Cassandra. Need something big? Cassandra is a large scale noSQL database that’s used by more than 1500 companies. Netflix, Reddit, Intuit, Comcast, GitHub, and CERN, to name a few, use Cassandra. If Cassandra is good enough for the team working on the Large Hadron Collider, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably good enough for most.

MySQL. Need something fast and easy? MySQL is an open source database that’s used by some of the world’s most well-known websites and social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. For years it has been a de facto standard.

4. Private blockchains are completely and utterly pointless.

The reason blockchain exists is because it’s public and everyone can verify all of the records. If you’re putting that behind a wall that only you have access to, then it’s merely a ledger in an internal network. When a blockchain becomes private, you reduce the need for half of the feature set that blockchain provides like trust, authentication of messages, etc. You’ll be better off using a database or a message bus. They’ll run faster, they can also be encrypted, and they’re less exotic technologies that people actually know how to use.

When to Use Blockchain

As allergic as I am to blockchain, there are some uses of blockchain technology that I think are valid – bank records, land records, or any product where you may have inventory that’s being bought or sold on a marketplace – especially a peer-to-peer marketplace where you don’t have a trusted intermediary like an Amazon.com. So essentially non-trusted marketplaces that you need to establish chain of custody. The latter, however, is a very narrow use case.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/4-reasons-everyone-is-wrong-about-blockchain-your-guide-to-rejecting-the-latest-tech-craze/feed1The Connection Between Innovation & Storyhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/the-connection-between-innovation-and-story
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/the-connection-between-innovation-and-story#respondWed, 13 Jun 2018 19:37:58 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16129On this episode of The Innovation Engine, we’ll be looking at the connection between story and innovation. Among the topics we’ll cover are why story can be a powerful tool to get teams in the right state for creating the new and novel, how you can learn to tell stories (whether you think you’re good... Read more »

On this episode of The Innovation Engine, we’ll be looking at the connection between story and innovation. Among the topics we’ll cover are why story can be a powerful tool to get teams in the right state for creating the new and novel, how you can learn to tell stories (whether you think you’re good at it or not), and how to make sure your stories actually get heard in a world that’s increasingly noisy.

Here with us again to talk about all that and more, including his new book, Storytelling for the Revolution, is Mitch Ditkoff. Mitch often speaks, conducts workshops, and provides private consulting, all in the name of empowering people to become more innovative. He is the co-founder of Idea Champions, a consulting and training company that helps organizations increase their core competency of innovation, and works with clients including AT&T, NBC Universal, Goodyear, PricewaterhouseCoopers, among others.

His blog, The Heart of Innovation, was named the #1 innovation blog in the world in 2010 and 2011, and he is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. Mitch has also been an adjunct faculty member for a variety of esteemed leadership development programs, including GE’s Crontonville Management Development Center, Duke Corporate Education, and University of New Mexico’s Anderson School of Management.

Listen to the episode:

Interested in hearing more? Tune in to the full episode via the SoundCloud embed below.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

What’s the relationship between storytelling and innovation?

Innovation is about the act of considering the new and different and manifesting it – not just thinking up ideas for stuff but actually turning them into reality. And stories are a way of people communicating that in real time, such that it’s not fantasy or theory but something in practice.

“The most powerful catalyst for getting people into the right frame of mind to do something different and to innovate is actually the sharing of stories, both mine and theirs.”

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/the-connection-between-innovation-and-story/feed03Pillar CEO David DeWolf Quoted in Enterprise Mobility Exchange Report on Commercializing Datahttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-ceo-david-dewolf-quoted-in-enterprise-mobility-exchange-report-on-commercializing-data
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-ceo-david-dewolf-quoted-in-enterprise-mobility-exchange-report-on-commercializing-data#respondTue, 12 Jun 2018 20:32:11 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16238David DeWolf, Founder and CEO of 3Pillar Global, was recently quoted in a report by Enterprise Mobility Exchange on the necessity of understanding and utilizing enterprise data across all industries. The report, titled “Data Dump: How To Analyze, Monetize All That Information,” focuses on three key learnings around data collection and digestion: How to leverage... Read more »

David emphasizes the point that businesses need to move beyond just simply collecting data; instead, businesses need to figure out how to make use of the stores of data they already have before they reach “a kind of paralysis that prevents people from doing anything with their data,” as he says in the report. To take advantage of the information in their data, David offers a three step path:

Make your data accessible to your customers

Make your data approachable, not complex

Make your data autonomous to better get it to your consumers

These steps will allow businesses not only to manage the vast stores of data they already have, but give companies the opportunity to begin commercializing this information and turn it into business results.

About Enterprise Mobility Exchange

Enterprise Mobility Exchange is an online community for global mobility professionals and business leaders who are leveraging mobile technology and services to improve operational efficiency, increase customer acquisition and loyalty, and drive increased profits across the entire enterprise.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-ceo-david-dewolf-quoted-in-enterprise-mobility-exchange-report-on-commercializing-data/feed0Go Native (App) or Go Home, and Other Key Takeaways from Apple’s WWDC 2018https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/go-native-app-or-go-home-and-other-takeaways-from-apples-wwdc-2018
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/go-native-app-or-go-home-and-other-takeaways-from-apples-wwdc-2018#respondTue, 12 Jun 2018 18:45:22 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16111I just returned from my first WWDC. I feel like I learned more in a week at Apple’s annual developer’s conference than I have in years of actually developing iOS apps. It was such a profound experience, in fact, that I sent the picture used as the header of this post to our Solutions team... Read more »

I just returned from my first WWDC. I feel like I learned more in a week at Apple’s annual developer’s conference than I have in years of actually developing iOS apps. It was such a profound experience, in fact, that I sent the picture used as the header of this post to our Solutions team in our private messaging channel last week with the note, “WWDC as metaphor. From darkness into the light of knowing.” Here are just a few of the things I thought were most intriguing from my week in San Jose.

Go Native or Go Home

Apple is on a multi-year project to kill hybrid applications, at least those ones that rely on webView and run Javascript on device. Every year they put more of a squeeze on the ability of advertisers to target users in this environment. So any ad-supported cross-platform applications are going to have long term issue with their revenue models. At the same time, Apple (and Google too) provide value added services that need to be custom built no matter the language used. What this means is that to use the latest features of a platform, a hybrid app still needs an iOS developer and an Android developer, as well as a Javascript specialist. Requiring three skill sets rather than two does not seem a win.

I’m more convinced than ever that anyone developing iOS applications should build native applications rather than hybrid webView based applications. Hybrid application development emphasizes the process (“Hey, you only need to build it once!”) over the product. Customers don’t care that it takes you half the time to write a bad product. It’s still bad. One major coffee chain whose logo you’d instantly recognize may have stores on every corner but even they, with all their resources, still push out a cross-platform, bug-ridden, usability mess of a hybrid application. Contrast this with one Fortune 500 big box store whose mobile team I got the opportunity to spend some time talking with. They described the corporate journey for their mobile strategy. Basically the only way to get an accessible app (a killer feature for them) was native. Their story is much closer to how 3Pillar does things – start with the product outcome not the technology or the process.

Buckle Your Seatbelt for Apple Machine Learning

Apple Machine Learning is absolutely amazing. Train models on macOS using Create ML, use then on Apple platform using Core ML. Training the models leverages Transfer Learning, which means that a 90% complete model is provided by Apple and you only have to train the last part using Create ML running on macOS. Using image recognition in your applications is easily within reach of regular iOS development teams. The level of ML understanding required by developers is much lower than it has ever been. While Create ML is amazing, it still had limitations. It is great for specific problem sets such as image recognition. There are use cases where it is not appropriate, however. One example of this is where you are looking for minor differences in images. Create ML models used in Transfer Learning are tuned to treat minor differences as noise. Apple does succeed in delivering a narrow set of features very well.

Everyone Talks A Good Game About Privacy; Apple Actually Lives It

Apple’s approach to privacy is really impressive. Overall privacy is treated as a first-level product attribute at Apple just like usability, functionality, or security. An Apple privacy team is a multi-disciplinary group that addresses legal, compliance, and engineering aspects of privacy throughout the product development process. The privacy team engineers actually review code for compliance just as security teams inspect code for weaknesses. Communicating a focus on privacy and actually following through build trust and loyalty in customers, attributes that all companies want.

Hello, Siri.

Siri Shortcuts was one of the headline features at the keynote. It did not seem really exciting, but digging in I believe there is a lot of potential for 3Pillar customers. Specifically, Siri will prompt users to interact with apps based on previous behavior AND what they are doing in real time. Yes, you can send a notification to a user to remind them of something they do regularly, but that notification can easily get lost if the user is driving or otherwise distracted. Siri knows what the user is doing right now, so Siri can prompt the user about regular activities based on the current situation. That means that information will be received by the user when they are ready to consume it. For example if you leave for your morning commute 15 minutes late, Siri knows that and will shift the time that it recommends a latte for you. At the moment Siri is only recommending stuff based on your behavior, but it is not difficult to imagine that it will evolve to predict future behavior.

My Favorites

WWDC is known for its stellar presentations all around. My personal favorite from the week was Vision with Core ML, where you can watch as an object recognition model is trained and deployed onstage using Create ML and Core ML. Some other notable presentations included:

Intentional Design, where you can learn the principles of intentional design and be entertained as well.

Wrapping it All Up

As always, Apple is one of the major players not only helping push the tech space forward but also making decisions that will have major effects downstream for companies of all shapes and sizes. Look no further, for example, than the focus they’re placing on pushing developers toward native apps vs. hybrid apps. Questions about what else I saw or heard at WWDC? Drop a note in the comments section below, or feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/go-native-app-or-go-home-and-other-takeaways-from-apples-wwdc-2018/feed0Automated Testing IS Engineering…and Manual Testing is Lunacyhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/automated-testing-is-engineering-manual-testing-is-lunacy
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/automated-testing-is-engineering-manual-testing-is-lunacy#respondTue, 05 Jun 2018 12:00:58 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=15987Automated testing IS engineering. End of story. It’s not testing, it’s not quality assurance (although it’s done in support of that), it is engineering. And it’s just as valuable as feature development, and worth every penny. I’ll rant for a moment about a manual testing only strategy. Manual testing only as a strategy is absolute... Read more »

Automated testing IS engineering. End of story. It’s not testing, it’s not quality assurance (although it’s done in support of that), it is engineering. And it’s just as valuable as feature development, and worth every penny.

I’ll rant for a moment about a manual testing only strategy. Manual testing only as a strategy is absolute lunacy. Let me get this right…you’re going to pay someone to check the work of somebody else that you paid to do the work? You’re going to do this each and every time you want to release software? This is acceptable? This is a strategy?

Manual testing is slow and time consuming. It’s fraught with error, and it’s not anything vaguely close to consistent. Worse, you are double spending if you’re not actually investing in automated testing…two people, one job…make software.

THE VALUE OF AUTOMATED TESTING

The thing about automated testing is that its value scales. It saves money over time. Each test automated saves time and money. Does the menu drop down and contain 3 items? 5 minutes of manual testing. Does the search box work? 5 minutes of manual testing. Keep adding manual tests and the minutes pile up into hours. Hours cost dollars, or, worse, delays in getting that software into production. The longer lived a product is, the more that investment is going to be paying itself back over time. Take those hours and multiply times the rate you’d be paying manual testers to check the code you paid someone else to write. That’s the cost of each and every release.

THE COST OF AUTOMATED TESTING

The cost of each and every release I mentioned above? Spend it on building an automated testing framework instead. When that framework is catching bugs every time a build is submitted, you are substantially reducing the cost to fix them. If bugs are caught right after code is written, it’s faster and easier to identify what went wrong.Better yet…if it’s its caught before it went live, you save potential downtime and the associated revenue costs (not to mention reputational damage). Those regression bugs that hit older parts of the code base? They can take a significant amount of time to dig out why things were written the way they were.

Automated testing’s value can be seen from space…with the naked eye. What’s often overlooked and unappreciated is that the work is just as complex as feature development. Building a setup that can run thousands (or tens of thousands) of automated tests, in an on-demand, scalable fashion, where the results can be categorized or played back in the case of failures, requires significant back-end engineering. These suites have to run fast enough to provide timely results. They have to be reliable enough to be counted on to not impede development.

More complex even is that automated testing engineers have to know two professions: software testing and programming. They are building products that test products. Quickly…consistently…cheaply. Automated testing requires all the skills, rigor, and discipline that feature development does, it just isn’t as glorified a profession.

WRAPPING IT ALL UP

If you and your development team want to take the long view, make the up-front investment to build out an automated testing framework. Your future self – and your future bosses and co-workers – will thank you. You will find yourselves working far more on products and features that deliver value to customers, far less on hot fixes and repetitive checking of the things you have already built.

SPREAD THE WORD

If you liked this post, please help us spread the word about it by using the Click to Tweet feature or the social sharing icons below.

Automated Testing IS Engineering...and Manual Testing is Lunacy. 3Pillar CTO Jonathan Rivers writes about why #automatedtesting is just as complex and valuable as feature development in this blog post. Click To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/automated-testing-is-engineering-manual-testing-is-lunacy/feed0Ideas Don’t Fail – But the Products Generated From Them Often Dohttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ideas-dont-fail-but-the-products-generated-from-them-often-do
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ideas-dont-fail-but-the-products-generated-from-them-often-do#respondThu, 31 May 2018 17:50:47 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16065The real art (and challenge) of creating a product that is going to succeed in digital health is creating something that is usable, useful, and desirable. That was the theme of “Great Ideas Don’t Always Make Great Products,” the talk 3Pillar CTO Jonathan Rivers gave recently at the Dev4Health conference. As a career product person... Read more »

The real art (and challenge) of creating a product that is going to succeed in digital health is creating something that is usable, useful, and desirable. That was the theme of “Great Ideas Don’t Always Make Great Products,” the talk 3Pillar CTO Jonathan Rivers gave recently at the Dev4Health conference. As a career product person at a developer conference, I was thrilled by the extent to which that message resonated with the audience in Cleveland.

We all know that healthcare has been among the final frontiers when it comes to putting the user at the center of the product conversation and building a solution that fixes a problem (as opposed to building a solution that’s seeking a problem.) Too often people lead with technology and thrust it upon the intended users without thinking about the implications of how that technology will fit into the user’s world.

Thankfully, throughout the conference, we heard speaker after speaker talk about the intent to flip things on their head and put the patient, the doctor, and the administrator back at the center of the conversation and focus on solving the problems they’re facing, not the other way around.

Enter the Product Mindset

At 3Pillar, we use a proprietary approach called the Product Mindset to help teams do just that. In developing digital products for hundreds of client companies in digital health, security, financial services, and many other industries, we have evolved an approach that guides our approximately 1000 developers, designers, and engineers in everything they do. The core tenets of the Product Mindset are:

Build for Outcomes

Excel at Change

Minimize Time to Value

These three tenets help us to be much more successful in transforming great ideas into products that are chosen by their intended audiences time and time again – always creating something that is usable, useful, and desirable.

Putting the Product Mindset into Practice

We share this approach in the hopes that some or all of it might benefit you and your team(s).

Building for Outcomes – this means pulling the user and the business goals back to the center of the conversation. Take time to truly, fully understand who is going to use the product and how their actions impact business goals. That information guides every decision around what, when, and how.

Excelling at Change is simply embracing the fact that change happens. Rather than push against it, accept change and work as a team to reduce its impact on progress. This means working in a way that keeps the cost of change low – learning and adapting, optimizing and automating where possible, and being willing to change direction when/if feedback so dictates.

Lastly – and most importantly, Minimize Time to Value. Build it small and iterate quickly. Short feedback loops mean checking in with the intended audience to validate you’re working in the right direction to solve their problems. Don’t be afraid to fail or change directions. If you’re validating your ideas, you’ll find that some of them are terrible and fail miserably. That’s ok – pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move where the data and your users are telling you to go.

Wrapping it Up – Start Small, But Start

Most products fail simply because we build something nobody wants. By truly understanding your users and your business, continually validating your ideas, making it small and getting it into their hands, and not being afraid to change, we believe you’re on the best path forward to building something they want to use.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/ideas-dont-fail-but-the-products-generated-from-them-often-do/feed0The Innovation Engine, Live from Collision Conference 2018https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/the-innovation-engine-live-from-collision-conference-2018
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/the-innovation-engine-live-from-collision-conference-2018#respondWed, 30 May 2018 14:37:47 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=16043We just concluded the second and last – for now – stop of The Innovation Engine’s Spring 2018 tour, from the floor of Collision in New Orleans. Collision is North America’s fastest growing tech conference and contains 16 different tracks, including SaaS Monster, Talk Robot, FullStk, and Growth Summit. This year’s conference brought together more than... Read more »

We just concluded the second and last – for now – stop of The Innovation Engine’s Spring 2018 tour, from the floor of Collision in New Orleans. Collision is North America’s fastest growing tech conference and contains 16 different tracks, including SaaS Monster, Talk Robot, FullStk, and Growth Summit.

This year’s conference brought together more than 25,000 business leaders from more than 5,600 companies in 120 countries to watch talks and learn how tech is impacting their lives, companies, and industries. Over the course of this episode, we’ll be talking with tech and product leaders from an interesting cross-section of companies, including Dropbox, NASA, and Haymarket Consumer Media, among others.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

You can tune in to the full episode via the SoundCloud embed below.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM COLLISION 2018

Guests we chat with on this episode include:

[1:20] Anaid Chacon, a product manager at Dropbox, a secure file hosting service that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. With a combination of both product management and engineering experience, she is able to help Dropbox execute on their technology strategy, particularly relating to putting our product out on desktop devices.

[12:15] Christopher Carmichael, the Chief Technology Officer for the Stennis Space Center, which is NASA’s largest rocket testing facility. We discuss how his team adapts to changing demands over time, how they are leveraging machine learning, and the technology that makes Christopher excited about the future.

[21:50] Mercedes Soria, the VP of Software Engineering for Knightscope, a startup that utilizes autonomous robots, analytics, and engagement to predict and prevent crime. “We build what we call the ultimate security guard.” Mercedes shares what goes into developing this technology, how they’re being used today, and what she sees happening in the future.

[37:45] Yoshi Tsuji and Tom Kruse join us from Win-Kel, a storage startup that participated in the startup competition hosted by Collision. Win-Kel is essentially “Airbnb for storage,” allowing people to make money off of extra space in their homes by renting it, at more affordable and flexible prices than traditional storage companies. As an international student, Yoshi felt he was paying too much to store things for a few months over the summer. He created a demo of this product on a simple website and, within a week, every listing was gone. “That’s when I knew this idea was going to fly.”

[44:20] Jonathan Block-Verk, the coFounder & CEO of coParenter, an online dispute resolution platform that uses AI, machine learning, and live mediators to help separating, divorced, and never married parents save money and time by staying out of court. 80% of users self-report that they no longer use courts to resolve their issues, so it’s actually being adopted by court systems to reduce caseload.

ABOUT THE INNOVATION ENGINE

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engineon iTunes. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Stitcher Radio or SoundCloud to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/the-innovation-engine-live-from-collision-conference-2018/feed05 Questions to Ask When You Hear “We Need to Accelerate Development”https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/5-questions-to-ask-when-you-hear-we-need-to-accelerate-development
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/5-questions-to-ask-when-you-hear-we-need-to-accelerate-development#respondTue, 29 May 2018 12:00:57 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=14942No one calls me when things are awesome. Google and Facebook aren’t calling me. The people that call me need help, and one of the most common things I hear is that they need to “accelerate development.” It could be that they don’t have enough engineers or that their engineers are kind of slow. But... Read more »

No one calls me when things are awesome. Google and Facebook aren’t calling me. The people that call me need help, and one of the most common things I hear is that they need to “accelerate development.” It could be that they don’t have enough engineers or that their engineers are kind of slow. But there are a lot of things to consider that might be responsible for this seemingly sluggish development pace.

Does the team know what we’re trying to accomplish?

Teams that understand what mountain they’re climbing climb the mountain faster. If they don’t understand the vision and goals, they waste time trying to figure out what to do and arguing about it.

I’ve spent hours in rooms with executives getting them to agree to three objectives for a product. But once they’ve agreed and the team gets those objectives, the team is off and running without having to consult the executives on every decision. They also have an easy way to prioritize ideas; if the idea doesn’t drive the objectives, it goes straight to the backlog.

We need that high-level understanding, but we also need to know it on a story or specific level. What are we trying to do with this task? One of my team members was doing a customer interview with a client engineer observing. The engineer was taking notes during the session like crazy. After it was over, she asked what they were writing and it turns out they had spent weeks debating a feature. By understanding what the customer needed and why, the engineer figured out exactly what they needed to build.

Is planning taking up too much time?

I had a client who was concerned about speed, so I checked into things and found that the team was spending 60-70% of their time planning. The client was very concerned that we were building the right thing and minimizing rework. That never works – Twitter, Facebook, and many of our clients have had to re-architect their systems. It’s impossible to know exactly what you’ll need in two years. Instead, build what you need for today in a flexible way and trust that when you need to change something in two years, you can adapt as necessary.

Negotiating what’s in or out of a release or where a feature falls in a roadmap is something that takes a lot of time. This is worst during annual planning. I’ve seen team progress come to a screeching halt and executives spending hours and hours trying to decide which projects to fund.

The trick is to do enough planning to guide the team and manage waste without the overhead strangling progress. Once you have objectives, decide how much achieving those are worth to you and assign budget, then make sure there are checkpoints in place.

Is the team getting bombarded with requests and meetings?

A survey of Engineers found “All the non-design and non-coding tasks take up 22.4 hours per week out of the 41.5 hours worked in total.” It’s important for teams to meet and solve problems, but team members also need time to put their headphones on and get cranking. Plan out your team’s collaboration time so you can leave work time at different times of day depending on their preferences. Trello has a great post on schedules for makers and managers that is full of advice on this topic.

How effective is our process for managing ideas or requests?

Software development is kind of an assembly line. Public clouds, DevOps, Automated Testing, and development frameworks are speeding up the line but the management of ideas can slow everything down. Tracing an idea through to development should help you see where things are getting clogged.

Is there a trouble-maker who needs some fixing?

Creating clarity and putting the right systems in place will get you far but you still may have some people whose negative behaviors are holding the team back. It may be shiny object syndrome, negativity, lack of responsiveness, conflict or lack of focus. Explain how the behavior is hurting and help them fix it.

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Looking for your dev team to accelerate output? Limit meetings & interruptions, writes @JessHallway. More than 50% of a team's time each week goes into non-design and non-coding tasks, according to one study. Click To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/5-questions-to-ask-when-you-hear-we-need-to-accelerate-development/feed0The Innovation Engine Podcast, Live from DigSouth 2018 – Highlights from the South’s Largest Tech Conferencehttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/dig-south-2018-highlights-from-souths-largest-tech-conference
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/dig-south-2018-highlights-from-souths-largest-tech-conference#respondWed, 09 May 2018 17:38:13 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=15949On this two-part episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we’re bringing you conversations from the floor of the DigSouth 2018 conference. DigSouth is the largest annual tech conference in the South, bringing together more than 2,500 people who are building digital products and experiences that change the way people live, work, and play. The conference... Read more »

On this two-part episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, we’re bringing you conversations from the floor of the DigSouth 2018 conference. DigSouth is the largest annual tech conference in the South, bringing together more than 2,500 people who are building digital products and experiences that change the way people live, work, and play.

The conference took place from April 25-27 in Charleston, SC, which has become known as “Silicon Harbor” for its blossoming tech scene.

Because of the numerous interviews from both days of the conference, this episode is split into two parts from over the course of the two days.

Part one features interviews with the likes of Megan Oepen, Head of Content for Under Armour; Jason Feifer, Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur magazine; David DeWolf, Founder & CEO of 3Pillar; and Jocelyn Mangan, former COO of Snag. Part two includes interviews with Susan Engleson, Senior Director of Product at comScore; Jeff Perkins, the Chief Marketing Officer for Parkmobile; and Cleveland Brown, the Founder and CEO of PayScout; among others.

Charleston was just the first stop on The Innovation Engine’s Spring 2018 tour – for our next stop, we’ll be podcasting from the floor of Collision in New Orleans, a collection of numerous tech conferences all under one roof.

Listen to the Episode

Tune in to the SoundCloud embed below to hear our interviews from part one.

Tune in to the SoundCloud embed below to hear our interviews from part two.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM DIG SOUTH 2018 PART ONE

On the first episode in our double feature, we talk with:

[2:00] Soon Yu, an international speaker and best selling author on innovation and design, kicked off the conference with a keynote titled “How Stinky Is Your Cheese?” Soon Yu says, “It isn’t always the biggest, baddest, or fastest mousetrap that gets the mice. It’s often the one with the stinkiest cheese. So your goal is to create stinky cheese: cheese that people smell, and that’s really highly relevant to them.” You can learn more about this concept, and why some organizations stand out, in Soon Yu’s book, Iconic Advantage.

[12:10] Megan Oepen, an award-winning Creative Director and Live Action Director who currently leads Under Armour’s content house, spoke about Storytelling and Content Creation in the Digital Era. “You can produce the most beautiful piece of creative or the most inspirational story, but if nobody’s there to see it, it’s completely useless and it doesn’t serve the brand or the client.”

[18:50] Jason Feifer is the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine and the host of two podcasts: Pessimists Archive, about the history of unfounded fears of innovation, and Problem Solvers, about how entrepreneurs solve unexpected problems in their business. Jason presented a keynote on how entrepreneurs can get press for their businesses. “It’s a talk I do because I realized… that most [entrepreneurs] have absolutely no idea what journalists do or how to reach out to them. And yet media is a tool, like any other tool, that can be used to help your business, if you understand it the right way.”

[27:50] David DeWolf, CEO of 3Pillar Global, spoke on a panel about building products with purpose. There’s a lot of focus put on purpose as a mission today, but you can’t forget about the fundamentals: “Focusing on those very real business targets allows us to make money so that we can reinvest, and the more that you have, the more you meet those operating targets, the more you can fulfill your mission.”

[39:40] Jocelyn Mangan, former COO of Snag, presented a talk titled “The New CMO.” She discussed how the pace at which technology is moving, which is faster than we can actually address it, changes everything we do. “In particular, with marketing, I think it poses some interesting challenges because, at the end of the day, we can use technology for so much more.”

HIGHLIGHTS FROM DIG SOUTH 2018 PART TWO

For the second installment of the podcast, we interviewed:

[00:41] Susan Engelson, the Senior Director of Product at comScore, where she works on the next generation of media measurement, including measurement of over-the-top media services and smart speakers. She shares her insight into The Future of TV Advertising in Today’s Digital World.

[12:07] Jeff Perkins, the Chief Marketing Officer of Parkmobile, a 3Pillar client that was recently acquired by BMW. Park Mobile powers parking via mobile and web apps in more than 3,000 locations across the country, and he stopped by after his talk (How to Become a CMO: A Marketers Journey from Middle Management to the C-Suite) to offer some insight on the future of mobile parking payments.

[27:34] Cori Banyon, the Founder & CEO of AndMe.TV, a virtual meet and greet platform that helps artists create fan experiences unlike any other. Using interactive video technology, fans can “get in line,” join the virtual stage, and meet their favorite artists face-to-face. She shares the story behind the platform and her plans for the future.

[33:54] Cleveland Brown, the Founder & CEO of Payscout, a global payment processing provider that connects merchants and consumers via credit, ATM, and alternative payment networks. He presented a talk titled VR Commerce is Here: The Monetization of Immersive Content, and stopped by afterwards to tell us more about the future of PayScout and alternative payment methods.

[47:03] Dr. Brian Sullivan, a clinical psychologist and the Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer of Morphii, a technology platform that focuses on providing better tools for expressing emotion, and thus better data and actionable insights for brands to leverage. We discuss the origins of Morphii, and why gaining more insight into your customers’ emotions is so valuable.

[53:11] Eli Calderón Morin, the Founder of All_ebt, a smart wallet for food stamp users that allows those on food stamps to participate in the digital economy. Eli participated in the startup pitch competition at Dig South, and he certainly offers a strong pitch: “There’s a lot of problems with food stamps, but we’re basically just trying to focus on consumers, on communities with low income, and figuring out how we can give them technology to help them be healthier, save money, and have access to better choices.”

ABOUT THE INNOVATION ENGINE

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engineon iTunes. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Stitcher Radio or SoundCloud to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser. You can download The Innovation Engine‘s dedicated iOS app from the iTunes App store, and you can subscribe to receive new episodes in your inbox each time one is published.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/dig-south-2018-highlights-from-souths-largest-tech-conference/feed0Stand By Your Lambda – Overcoming Lambda’s Limitationshttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/stand-by-your-lambda-overcoming-lambdas-limitations
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/stand-by-your-lambda-overcoming-lambdas-limitations#respondThu, 03 May 2018 19:33:54 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=15877A short while ago, I pointed out some Lambda anti patterns. Following up on that post, I thought we’d also like to point out some tips and tricks in overcoming some of the limitations of AWS’ Function as a Service Lambda. Lambda as a service is, in all honesty, pretty awesome. Self-scaling, modular code execution... Read more »

A short while ago, I pointed out some Lambda anti patterns. Following up on that post, I thought we’d also like to point out some tips and tricks in overcoming some of the limitations of AWS’ Function as a Service Lambda. Lambda as a service is, in all honesty, pretty awesome. Self-scaling, modular code execution is an incredibly useful tool. However, we do see the classic trend of everything seeming like a nail, and Lambda is the golden hammer. Lambda is designed as a discrete small event handler. When you start using it for other things (or even in normal use), you’ll start bumping up against its limitations. Lambda has a few critical limitations.

5 minute execution

This is the big one that gets most people into trouble. Fun hint – unless you have a reason not to – set processing time for all your functions for 5 minutes. You are only charged for actual usage, so rather than be surprised that something took a few seconds longer than you had configured, play it safe. The nature of Lambda is that it’s targeted for small, bite-sized processing tasks, and sometimes you can get into a situation where what seems to be a great use case for Lambda will bump up against this limit and cause you much heartburn. Here are a few approaches you can take to mitigate this limit.

Divide and conquer

A pretty common use case for Lambda is processing a file that drops on S3. If possible, instead of processing the whole file in a single Lambda invocation, I suggest splitting the work up by calling another Lambda to process a set number of rows that you are more than confident will complete under the limit. Basically, pass the S3 location, the start line number, the end line number and loop over until you’ve kicked off each set. Alternatively, streaming the records into another solution such as SNS or Kinesis may suffice. Be aware that if the size of the data payload is out of your control, you’ll want to still put in some kind of stopgap measure.

Cache some data and keep it warm

While this may cause other issues (see below) – caching some data in the /tmp partition provided to all function containers may provide a means to decrease execution time after the first call – you’ll have to balance whether you can build the cached data, write to /tmp, then still perform the necessary functionality – and you’ll pay this price on each cold start of your function, but on warm execution, it may save a LOT of processing time. To keep it warm, you can schedule a CloudWatch scheduled event to ‘ping’ your function – a no-op parameter that can either ensure the container stays alive, or starts it up so functional hits are pre-warmed. You’ll need to find the right balance here to ensure you’re not spinning up extra copies of your function unnecessarily, but it’s something that you can tune over time.

Call yourself as a lifeline

If in your use case, splitting up the processing of the data file doesn’t work – say it needs to be processed sequentially – then you can leverage the context object to effectively get a ‘time remaining’, and once approaching the limit, call the same Lambda asynchronously, providing a file offset. The subsequent invocations skip the previously processed lines, and continue on. As with any recursion – be wary not to put yourself in an infinite loop – you never want to be in a position to explain how you did a ‘Denial of Wallet’ attack on yourself.

Turn up the volume – of memory

For some cases, increasing the memory allocated may reduce processing time – watch the CloudWatch logs output for your function’s invocation memory usage. If peak usage is at or near the top of the allocation, upping the number may help. This is likely a stopgap measure, but an incredibly easy one to implement.

Change the game – or at least the language

Different languages have different strengths – however, building your Lambda in a compiled language – .Net Core, Go, and even Java may perform better for your particular use case than an interpreted language like NodeJS or Python. It might not be an option, but something to keep in mind.

Bring in the big guns

Let’s face it – there will be some scenarios and events that will just take more than 5 minutes to process. In this age of endless data, data files are getting larger, and you’re going to have to deal with it. As much as I’m a fan of Lambda – it’s not always going to cut it. There are two major escalation points that you can choose – the most straightforward is to move your processing from Lambda to a Fargate task – a serverless container execution can give all the benefits of Lambda without many of the limitations. That comes with more of a preparation cost – but done strategically, Fargate containers can dovetail very nicely into your existing serverless product architecture. The second approach would be to leverage EMR, Glue, or other service to do the heavy lifting, and just use Lambda as the triggering mechanism to ensure the processing flow is started.

Request payload

The next most likely item to get caught up on is Lambda’s payload limits – 6MB for synchronous execution, but only 128K for asynchronous calls. Truth be told, if you’re passing large payloads around an event framework – you’re doing it wrong :). You should be checking your payload size before calling a Lambda programmatically – because sometimes you’re not in control of your message size, you should also know some workarounds to this.

Divide and conquer (again)

Like the above advice for processing time, if possible, split your payload to be processed by separate invocations of your function – they autoscale automatically – so splitting and passing part of the payload at a time will allow you to not only avoid the payload limit, but will, as above, run faster in parallel.

Use some scratch space

The limit is only on the invocation payload – not the data processed, so you can send a S3 or database location instead of the data. I recently was doing some event data processing, and I was processing customer data, and reorganized the data into a map to allow efficient lookup. To save re-doing this map function in subsequent calls, I was attempting to pass it along in the payload to child Lambda calls. Well, as you can guess, the lookup map got too big over time and blew up the Lambda invocation. I ended up using DynamoDB as the scratch space as the required throughput was so low, it was negligible cost, and performed fantastic! Note that DynamoDB has an item limit of 400k – so keep in mind on how you use it. I could have also used ElastiCache, but I simply went with a resource I was already using in the application. Splitting the data and writing out to S3 is an even better way to go, as you can use the dropping of the file on S3 as the mechanism of triggering the subsequent Lambda. Think about your control mechanisms as events rather than flow, and these usage patterns will develop before your very eyes.

Networking

Okay – this isn’t a limitation per se, but there are some related limitations. Running Lambdas inside a VPC poses a few restrictions. First, each instance of your function will run inside a container – and that container will be issued an EIP on instantiation (which adds a significant increase to function cold start time as well) – and you may have limits on your account of EIPs. Secondarily to that, you can only run as many instances of your function as you have IP addresses available in your subnet. This is a fundamental issue due to you not typically being able to control how many instances of your function are running. For this – you should only run functions inside your VPC that need to run inside your VPC, and for those that do have to run inside – be sure to design them to minimize likelihood of massive concurrent execution. You can also now add a limit to the maximum number of concurrent invocations of your function. This will cause you to fall into an AWS retry scenario – and will, by nature, throttle your function. You may be trading one set of error messages for another, but it’s there as a lever you can use.

Memory and Disk Limits

Now disk limits may sound odd in the discussion on serverless technologies – but utilizing the /tmp drive space is a pretty common technique to cache data (as mentioned above), which may minimize execution time on non-cold starts. However, it’s limited to 512MB – so trying to cache too much will cause your container to fail. Use the space sparingly, but use it where it can help.

Memory limits are another factor – depending on your code, hitting the limit of function memory may cause slowness, or may even cause the code to crash. As you are being charged by GB seconds, you do not want to overprovision your function, particularly one called often, but you don’t want to hit that limit either. Do a periodic analysis of the CloudWatch logs output of your function. The final line of output lists the provisioned memory, and the peak memory used. Start high, then tune down – try to aim your peak memory usage at around the 80% mark, just in case you have some unexpected behavior, but you’ll need to take account to the volatility of your memory usage to find the right, but not oversized, mark.

Summary

So, in closing, there’s a lot of great things about Lambda, and how it fits into the serverless ecosystem (and yes, they are different), but knowing how to make the most of it is dependant upon knowing its strengths and its limitations. At 3Pillar Global, we are excited about the promise of serverless computing, in all the forms it takes, from Lambda, to Fargate, serverless databases, and beyond. If you really love serverless, then stand by through the limitations, because after all, it’s just a Lambda.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/stand-by-your-lambda-overcoming-lambdas-limitations/feed0I’m Building a Killer Team at 3Pillar and Here’s Whyhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/im-building-a-killer-team-at-3pillar-and-heres-why
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/im-building-a-killer-team-at-3pillar-and-heres-why#respondThu, 19 Apr 2018 14:22:18 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=15905At the beginning of this year, I found myself at a moment of change. Since opening our doors in 2006, 3Pillar has experienced strong and steady growth. We have hired a top-notch team to collaborate with our clients, and we have earned accolades in everything from being named a top service provider in Forrester’s 2018... Read more »

But now, it’s time to take our company to the next level. We are expecting to exceed 20% revenue growth and reach 1000 employees this year. As a result, we have added two key leaders to further build the team that will get us there — each of whom is uniquely equipped to support our growth from an emerging to a recognized leader in digital product development services.

Our new VP of Technology, Scott Varho, was the ideal choice to head our solutions architecture and technology consulting teams. His experience leading product for EverFi and Interfolio gave him the ultimate foundation to connect our highly talented, skilled, committed, and experienced practitioners with clients for short and long term value drivers.

We added Margaret Shepard as our new VP of Marketing and Communications to lead our marketing and public relations teams. It has become clear that it is time for 3Pillar to transition from one of the Mid-Atlantic’s best known secrets to a known industry leader. Margaret’s strong combination of agency, corporate, and tech communications experience, most recently at 1776 and UNION, will elevate our strategic marketing and communications initiatives.

As a product development specialist, 3Pillar has and is primed to continue to experience rapid expansion while continuing to deliver a quality experience for our customers. These recent hires will ensure that our operations continue to meet market demand and delight our clients as we scale.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/im-building-a-killer-team-at-3pillar-and-heres-why/feed01776 Challenge Cup 2018 Fan Favorite: How Mobile Passport is Innovating Air Travel & Digital Identificationhttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/1776-challenge-cup-2018-fan-favorite-how-mobile-passport-is-innovating-air-travel-mobile-ids-with-hans-miller-ceo-of-airside-mobile
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/1776-challenge-cup-2018-fan-favorite-how-mobile-passport-is-innovating-air-travel-mobile-ids-with-hans-miller-ceo-of-airside-mobile#respondWed, 18 Apr 2018 14:00:05 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=15889On this episode of The Innovation Engine, we welcome Airside Mobile’s Hans Miller to the studio to talk about his company’s experience at the recent 1776 Challenge Cup, where Airside Mobile was voted the Challenge Cup’s fan favorite. We talk with Hans about his successful entrepreneurship journey, how Airside Mobile can help you breeze through customs... Read more »

On this episode of The Innovation Engine, we welcome Airside Mobile’s Hans Miller to the studio to talk about his company’s experience at the recent 1776 Challenge Cup, where Airside Mobile was voted the Challenge Cup’s fan favorite. We talk with Hans about his successful entrepreneurship journey, how Airside Mobile can help you breeze through customs today, and areas where it could soon be used to manage digital identification on a much broader scale.

3Pillar Client Partner Jesse Vizcaino co-hosts this episode. Jesse works with a wide range of software and security companies to help them bring new products and concepts to market. He has a keen interest in digital ID and joins to discuss with Hans.

Airside Mobile works with leaders in the travel industry to create innovative mobile apps that make travel faster, easier, and more efficient. Airside Mobile’s collaboration with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, HMSHost, MasterCard, and others have generated numerous awards and international press coverage from outlets like Wired, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Huffington Post, CNN, and many others.

Listen to the Episode

Interested in hearing more? Tune in to the full episode via the SoundCloud embed below:

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Mobile Passport is a free app that helps you go through U.S. customs very quickly and efficiently.

The app allows you to scan in your passport, so when you take a trip internationally and you’re returning to the United States, as soon as you land, you select your own passport and any family members’ passports who might be traveling with you. You answer five questions about any items you might have to declare, and then you hit send as soon as the wheels touch down in the U.S.

Within five seconds, you get an encrypted receipt that looks a lot like a mobile boarding pass. And with that receipt, you can go to a mobile passport express line that will lead you directly to a customs officer.

You will scan your receipt, you’ll show your photo, and then you’re done. The whole process takes, officially, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 17 seconds on average, which is about five times faster than going through the normal process.

Where does Hans see this mobile identity technology being applied in the future, outside of the customs line?

Even when we look at travel, there are other lines: When you’re waiting to check into a hotel, why do you stop at the front desk? Usually it’s because they want to check your ID. A lot of hotel chains are already experimenting with mobile check in, and Mobile Passport can make that process more robust.

Part of what they are doing with the platform is creating a very secure way to allow passengers or travelers to store their information and share it in a way that Airside Mobile can’t see it. “We don’t have the keys to that data, it’s all encrypted on our platform. The only people who have the keys are the actual travelers themselves. As a result, when you start looking at things in finance such as Know Your Customer, anti-money laundering applications, the potential to take this platform and apply it into those areas is extremely high, and we’re really excited about the idea that, someday, you’ll be able to rely on your Mobile Passport account and facial recognition as your ID across almost any ID transaction, whether it’s buying a case of beer or checking into a hotel or opening a bank account.”

Hans’ advice for entrepreneurs:

Having a really great co-founder or set of co-founders is really critical.

You need to be mentally tough. It takes a long time, and very few of these startups are overnight successes, “so being able to stick it out and endure is pretty important.”

Resources:

ABOUT THE INNOVATION ENGINE

Since 2014, 3Pillar has published The Innovation Engine, a podcast that sees a wide range of innovation experts come on to discuss topics that include technology, leadership, and company culture. You can download and subscribe to The Innovation Engineon iTunes. You can also tune in via the podcast’s home on Stitcher Radio or SoundCloud to listen online, via Android or iOS, or on any device supporting a mobile browser. You can download The Innovation Engine‘s dedicated iOS app from the iTunes App store, and you can subscribe to receive new episodes in your inbox each time one is published.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/1776-challenge-cup-2018-fan-favorite-how-mobile-passport-is-innovating-air-travel-mobile-ids-with-hans-miller-ceo-of-airside-mobile/feed0David DeWolf Featured in Forbes on Digital Transformation in Businesshttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/david-dewolf-featured-in-forbes-on-digital-transformation-in-business
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/david-dewolf-featured-in-forbes-on-digital-transformation-in-business#respondThu, 29 Mar 2018 21:12:43 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=158103Pillar Global CEO David DeWolf was recently interviewed by Peter Horst for Forbes.com on the topic of how traditional businesses can successfully complete a digital transformation. Throughout the interview, David focuses on how businesses can take the first step toward becoming truly digital, while understanding that the prospect of starting a digital transformation in this... Read more »

3Pillar Global CEO David DeWolf was recently interviewed by Peter Horst for Forbes.com on the topic of how traditional businesses can successfully complete a digital transformation. Throughout the interview, David focuses on how businesses can take the first step toward becoming truly digital, while understanding that the prospect of starting a digital transformation in this age of over-saturation can be daunting.

In the article, titled “What Traditional Businesses Need To Know When Beginning A Digital Transformation,” David speaks on his experience seeing companies face the multitude of issues, risks, and opportunities that come with transforming their business into a digital entity. As David puts it, “In a matter of years every successful business will have a thriving digital business,” meaning that companies need to begin thinking about taking this step now. However, most organizations default to tackling digital transformation from the perspective of an IT organization, when they should be thinking of themselves as a business offering digital software products.

To solidify this distinction, David offers three fundamental differences between IT software and digital software products:

A software product must be chosen,

A software product must be self-funding, and

A software product is never done.

David also offers a word of caution to businesses undergoing this change: “Where we see digital innovation fail is when an organization loses sight of either customer needs or business objectives.” Instead, companies should truly listen to and value their customer’s feedback to ensure their teams are building successful products.

About Forbes

Forbes.com is the number one business news source worldwide, featuring articles on business, finance, industry, investing, and marketing. Forbes.com is a subdivision of Forbes, Inc., which publishes the bi-weekly Forbes magazine featuring articles of the same nature. Forbes.com has an online community of contributors who also provide insights on topics including technology, communications, science, politics, and law.

About David DeWolf

David DeWolf is the Founder and CEO of 3Pillar Global, on of the Mid-Atlantic’s fastest growing technology companies. In this role, he has guided 3Pillar to a leadership position within the Product Development Services sector, establishing 3Pillar has the go-to innovator for content, information, and data-rich companies looking to grow revenue through software.

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@3Pillar CEO @ddewolf talks to @Forbes about the steps traditional businesses can take to successfully begin digital transformation.Click To Tweet

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/david-dewolf-featured-in-forbes-on-digital-transformation-in-business/feed03 Cloud Optimization Projects That Will Pay for Themselveshttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/3-cloud-optimization-projects-that-will-pay-for-themselves-in-2018
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/3-cloud-optimization-projects-that-will-pay-for-themselves-in-2018#respondThu, 29 Mar 2018 15:03:21 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=15800AWS introduced 1,430 new features and tools in 2017, including 497 in the 4th quarter alone. This means that it can be a challenge for even the most aware and experienced AWS practitioner to stay abreast of cost-saving and other opportunities. If you are considering a move to the cloud or are spending more than you... Read more »

AWS introduced 1,430 new features and tools in 2017, including 497 in the 4th quarter alone.

This means that it can be a challenge for even the most aware and experienced AWS practitioner to stay abreast of cost-saving and other opportunities.

If you are considering a move to the cloud or are spending more than you expected in your current AWS environment, a bit of brainstorming and guidance can be extremely helpful in navigating your options. As part of the Cloud Services practice at 3Pillar, I live on the front lines of AWS and its ever-expanding array of technical services.

Based upon projects we’ve recently undertaken for clients, below are three Cloud Optimization projects that I believe will pay for themselves in 12 months or less.

OPTIMIZATION PROJECT 1: Disaster Recovery

AWS offers a compelling alternative to the classic disaster recovery model – purchasing and managing a completely isolated secondary environment to be available if some calamity befalls the primary facility. The drawback, of course, is that these emergency servers sit idle – hopefully forever. Even though these servers are never used they must still be maintained – hardware repaired or replaced, operating systems patched, software updated, applications installed. All this takes time and money.

Transforming your application to be cloud-native removes almost all the need for a disaster recovery solution. A cloud-native application can move workloads from one data center to another automatically. It can move data, protect backups and create air-gaps to protect the last-line-of-defense physical backups. A cloud-native application is not just an application but a machine that builds and repairs itself.

Even if we don’t have a cloud-native application we can still apply some of the same techniques to provide disaster recovery options to more mundane environments that can save nearly 100% of the cost of your DR installation while still meeting (and perhaps exceeding) your RPO (recovery point objective) and RTO (recovery time objective) standards.

One example is using the ideas of Infrastructure-as-code to create an environment definition that can be used to recreate the complete production environment in minutes. The environment definition – typically a few small json files and data backups – can replace complex (and unused) DR installations.

Having your DR environment defined using only a few files provides additional benefits such as the ability to rehearse the DR process frequently. Knowing that the environment can be built from scratch within your RTO is helpful – but knowing that those backups that you are paying for are actually usable is priceless.

So AWS can replace an expensive DR environment and provide greater certainty that your DR plan will work. A genuine win-win.

OPTIMIZATION PROJECT 2: ETL and Data Reporting

Managing large amounts of data efficiently and cheaply is a problem that will never have a permanent solution. Not only is there a constant flood of new data but there will always be new ways that business want to use this data.

One 3Pillar Client thought they had a universal solution to data management – DynamoDB. Not only did it provide the flexibility they needed in data structure, the day-to-day management of the databases was practical as well. Ad hoc access to source or processed data was easy for the admins and most data analysis was straightforward. But there were use cases where queries would run for days or weeks. Not ideal.

With this in mind, they asked 3Pillar to explore alternatives. Improving how they managed DynamoDB was one of the options and we did find ways to improve their use of the database. However, the real improvements came from considering directly how the data would be used.
Taking the time to interview users and develop a comprehensive understanding of the multiple use cases allowed us to recommend two solutions to the client: (a) an EMR + S3 + Athena for cold data and (b) a Lambda + Elasticsearch solution for hot data.

Cost savings were astonishing; 99% cost reduction on storage – from $12,000 to $30 a month – while query times improved from days to hours.

Lots of querying solutions let you query on anything – but we study use cases and design a store around use cases that meet all needs – and nothing gets us more excited than reducing client expenses to .25% of what they had been.

OPTIMIZATION PROJECT 3: Instance Fleet Management

One of the simplest ways to reduce your AWS bill is to address how you manage your fleet of EC2 instances.

Each instance only costs pennies per hour to operate, but when you have the 1,000 instances that one 3Pillar customer operates, small costs add up to something substantial. Even when operating EC2 on a small scale there are many simple ways to reduce cost that will not tie up your engineers for weeks.

Here are a few options to consider.

Does your use case benefit from horizontal or vertical scaling? Understanding whether it is better to have a lot of small instances or a few large ones will help you manage costs. Experiments to determine the correct balance are easy to achieve and you can compare costs directly.

Leveraging the multitude of prepaid options for reserved instances makes sense for predictable workloads. If you know that your workload is going to last at least a year, there is really no downside to prepaying with reserved instances. Scheduled Reserved instances can now be successfully applied to variable workloads – say an autoscaled instance that is only needed 12 hours a day. Basically you are prepaying an instance for a predetermined time each day.

Spot instances can be used where the workload is not time sensitive – a classic example being video encoding. Spot instances can provide 50% or more in cost savings where the workload allows. Note: if you rely on spot instances there is always the chance that there are none available – but if that happens, you still have the flexibility to move that workload to a reserved or on-demand instance as needed.

AWS is a journey, not a destination, and our view is that this is a positive. Once you have moved to the cloud and are fully installed, we recommend revisiting everything. Every 6 months on the cloud everything is new – let us help you find the opportunities that have emerged since your last assessment.

An example of this ongoing modification is what is taking place with the Reserve Instances mentioned previously – it is now possible to defer the size of instance you are going to prepay. This is great if you are unsure about what your long term workload will be. A new array of prepayment options exists today where it used to be all or nothing, and the driver of that decision is autoscaling. Our team would be excited to review, rethink, and help you identify newer, better options.

If you have a more than 20 instances, you should seriously consider your fleet management policy. Because we have the opportunity to focus on AWS and its rapidly-increasing number of features and tools (plus everything we learn from implementing these solutions with a wide array of customers) our team works efficiently and can help with just a few hours of work. Contact us today to schedule a no-cost conversation with an AWS subject matter expert to see where you could save by moving to the cloud.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/3-cloud-optimization-projects-that-will-pay-for-themselves-in-2018/feed0Integrating JMeter and MySQL With Your Databasehttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/integrating-jmeter-and-mysql-into-your-database
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/integrating-jmeter-and-mysql-into-your-database#commentsTue, 27 Mar 2018 14:14:46 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=15633JMeter is a widely-used tool for performing API testing. It is very easy to automate APIs to send requests and receive responses using JMeter. But many of us have faced a situation when we have to store some values in a database and/or fetch records from a database and then assert the database responses. To... Read more »

JMeter is a widely-used tool for performing API testing. It is very easy to automate APIs to send requests and receive responses using JMeter. But many of us have faced a situation when we have to store some values in a database and/or fetch records from a database and then assert the database responses. To address this problem, I have written this blog where we will learn how to integrate a DB with JMeter, fetch the records from the DB, and then assert the records fetched from the DB.

Pre-Requisites:

To start the integration of the database with JMeter, we need to have following prerequisites:

JMeter

MySQL DB installed on your machine

Permission to connect to DB and run CRUD operations on DB

Java 8

To start with, we need to have a MySQL connector on our machine to set up a proper communication channel between JMeter and MySQL. Follow these steps to do this correctly.

MySql connector download:

Download the latest MySQL connector driver. There are both Zip and Tar files available on this page, and we can download any of these.

2. Unzip the compressed file and copy the mysql-connector-java-5.1.xx-bin file.

3. Paste this file into the Apache JMeter lib folder, which will be at following path: ..\apache-jmeter-x.x\lib.

If you do not complete the above steps, you may see this error while running the JMeter tests: “No suitable driver found for jdbc:mysql://localhost”3306/Testing.”

Configuring the Database:

To configure the database, you must first open the JMeter batch file. Then, add a JDBC Connection Configuration using the following flow shown in the following image: Test Plan > Thread Group > Add > Config Element > JDBC Connection Configuration.

Then, we need to fill in the values for following fields:

Variable name bound to Pool section:Variable Name:A variable name is mandatory in a request because it is used as a reference between JMeter and the Database connection.

Connection Pool Configuration Section: Values are filled by default in this section. Use the default values.

Connection Validation by Pool Section: Values are filled by default in this section. Use the default values.

Database Connection Configuration:

Database URL – This should be in following format:

2. JDBC driver class – This is the class in which the code with a particular database is implemented:

com.mysql.jdbc.Driver – This is a static series which is used while connecting to MySQL

If the correct driver class name is not provided in the configuration, the following error may appear as we are running the JMeter tests: “No suitable driver found for jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/Testing.”

Username – the name of a user who has access to the DB

Password – the password for accessing the DB

3. Add a JDBC Request as a child element to the Thread Group. This will be used to send requests to the DB.

In the JDBC request, we will send the Query that we want to use to fetch records from the DB. For example, we could use the following code:

Reading values from JDBC response:

Do not use the extractors, because the DB values are not extracted properly. Instead, use Beanshell Postprocessor as a child under the JDBC Request. BeanShell Postprocessor stores the DB value in Array, which can be used for assertion.

If both the string ‘expected’ and ‘actual’ match. then the result is passed; otherwise, the result will fail. We can also add a CSV file to read the expected value from there.

Troubleshooting

There are some issues that may need some troubleshooting while setting up this integration. I will address few of those here.

Issue 1

You receive the following message: “Communications link failure. The last packet sent successfully to the server was 0 milliseconds ago. The drive has not received any packets from the server.”

There are a few probable solutions for this issue:

If your DB connection uses VPN, make sure that the VPN is connected and running.

Make sure the firewall or anti-virus software isn’t blocking the MySQL service.

If there is a “skip-networking” line in your MySQL config file, make it comment by adding the “#” sign at the beginning of that line.

Uncomment the “bind-address” attribute or change it to one of the following IPs: bind-address=”127.0.0.1″ or bind-address=”0.0.0.0″

Issue 2

You receive the following message: “Access denied for user ‘ca4app’@%’ to database ‘sakila'”

There are following probable solutions for this issue:

Make sure the Database Name, Schema Name, Username and Password are correct.

This concludes my process for integrating a database with JMeter, and then using this integration to fetch records from the database and assert that these records were accurately fetched. Please feel free to leave comments or questions.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/integrating-jmeter-and-mysql-into-your-database/feed13Pillar CEO David DeWolf to Speak at DigSouth Conferencehttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-ceo-david-dewolf-to-speak-at-digsouth-conference
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-ceo-david-dewolf-to-speak-at-digsouth-conference#respondMon, 12 Mar 2018 14:17:37 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=153393Pillar CEO David DeWolf will participate in a panel discussion on digital product development at DigSouth, which will be held from April 25th through 27th in Charleston, South Carolina. David will be a member of the panel discussion titled “Engineered to Add Value: Digital Product Development Designed to Grow Your Bottom Line,” where he will... Read more »

3Pillar CEO David DeWolf will participate in a panel discussion on digital product development at DigSouth, which will be held from April 25th through 27th in Charleston, South Carolina.

David will be a member of the panel discussion titled “Engineered to Add Value: Digital Product Development Designed to Grow Your Bottom Line,” where he will share tips and lessons learned from growing a product development company over the past decade.

3Pillar’s expertise in digital product development was recently recognized by Forrester Research in their latest NowTech report – “Service Providers for Custom Software Development” – which lists the top software development companies in the U.S. The panel will be held on the Technology Stage on Thursday, April 26th at 3:15 PM. David will also introduce a session sponsored by 3Pillar titled “Purpose-Driven Software Design: From Conception to Production,” which will focus on ensuring products are connecting with and fulfilling customer or client needs.

About the Conference

Now in its 5th iteration, the DigSouth Tech Conference is an annual event that brings together both the top tech companies and the smartest, scalable startups. The conference features 3 distinct stages – the Business Stage, the Technology Stage, and the Marketing Stage – with keynote speeches, fireside chats, and panels centered on those core tracks. These core tracks feed into the overall theme of “Relevance” of the conference – each session will encourage attendees and presenters alike to explore the question of “Are we relevant?” and its specifications when it comes to strategies, platforms, technologies, and systems for different businesses.

For more information on the conference, including a full schedule, list of speakers, and how to register to attend, please visit the official conference website.

Join David and Spread the Word

If you’d like to join David at the event, registration is open on the event’s website. To help spread the word about the event, you can use the Click to Tweet feature below or the social media icons at the bottom of the post.

]]>https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-ceo-david-dewolf-to-speak-at-digsouth-conference/feed03Pillar Develops Voting App for 1776 Challenge Cup Global Finalshttps://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-global-developed-voting-app-1776-challenge-cup
https://www.3pillarglobal.com/news/3pillar-global-developed-voting-app-1776-challenge-cup#respondFri, 09 Mar 2018 17:42:32 +0000https://www.3pillarglobal.com/?p=15291The 1776 Challenge Cup is a global event based on competitions in 75 cities on 5 continents. 3Pillar was chosen to develop the mobile application that will be used for voting at the 1776 Challenge Cup Global Finals on Thursday, March 22nd. The Global Finals are the culmination of the worldwide Challenge Cup startup pitch competition and... Read more »

The 1776 Challenge Cup is a global event based on competitions in 75 cities on 5 continents. 3Pillar was chosen to develop the mobile application that will be used for voting at the 1776 Challenge Cup Global Finals on Thursday, March 22nd. The Global Finals are the culmination of the worldwide Challenge Cup startup pitch competition and voting is the method used to choose the overall winner.

The voting app will be used by Challenge Cup attendees to choose the grand prize winner, who will receive $100,000 to fund their ideas. In addition, fans around the world will be watching the event via livestream and will use the 3Pillar app to select a “Fan Favorite.”

3Pillar is pleased to be deeply involved with the Challenge Cup finals, both in terms of providing custom technology and also in terms of mentorship. The day prior to the Challenge Cup, 3Pillar CEO David DeWolf will anchor a panel discussion for entrepreneurs and founders titled “What to Do When You’re Not Raising.”

The 1776 Challenge Cup focuses on startups that tackle meaningful problems and execute world-changing ideas. Contenders are nominated from local startup competitions in 75 cities worldwide. The top 20 nominees are then invited to participate in the Global Finals for the grand prize.

1776 has conducted the Challenge Cup for four years to discover the most promising, highly scalable startups poised to solve complex challenges across borders, regulated industries, and emerging technologies. Winners have included Twiga, a startup from Kenya that developed a mobile-based supply platform for Africa’s retail outlets, kiosks, and market stalls, and MUrgency, a startup from Dubai that created a seamless global emergency response network.

For more information on the 1776 Challenge Cup Global Finals, including a list of finalists and how to purchase tickets to attend, visit the official website. The 1776 Challenge Cup Global Finals will be held at The Anthem in Washington, DC.